Reading and storytelling can improve children’s health, new Yale research shows 

It is well understood that learning how to read is essential to a child’s intellectual development, and new research from the Yale Child Study Center shows that reading and other literacy skills, such as storytelling, can also be good for a child’s physical and mental health.

Professor Linda Mayes believes in the benefits of reading and storytelling, and along with colleagues, is concerned about the recent decline in childhood literacy in the United States and a lack of children meeting baseline literacy standards established by the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP).

“Literacy is the capacity to create a narrative,” Professor Mayes said. “We typically think of literacy just as reading, but it’s also being able to narrate your life; having the ability to tell stories brings others in. It also helps you understand your life.”

NAEP testing in 2022 showed that 37 per cent of fourth-graders performed below their basic reading level, representing a stark 14 per cent drop since 1992 and a three-point drop just since 2019, the biggest reduction in scores since the testing began.

Collaborating with Scholastic Publishers for the review, Professor Mayes shared that while there is a strong understanding in the education sector of the value of reading, less is understood about the health promotion benefits. 

“The more we invest in education, the more we’re investing in children’s health and a healthy community,” she explained, while adding that the topic should be approached as a collaboration among families, educators, and healthcare providers, and that literacy needs to begin in early childhood—and to be encouraged by adults long before a child even starts school.

The link between childhood literacy and health

There are three ways that literacy in childhood may improve lifelong health, the Professor explained. 

To start, she said, literacy can promote understanding, including what a young person can do to live a healthier life and become a healthy adult.

Literacy also helps children expand their worlds, providing new role models, and helping them see the different ways they can live their lives.

Similarly, literacy can help build social connections, in part by helping young people share the stories they know with others. This also can expand their social network by amplifying their ability to deepen and connect with a diversity of people.

Side benefits well known in the scientific community include that reading and having a rich literary world can help manage one’s stress, uncertainties, daily life, and emotions. In turn, being connected with others has a positive impact on health as it serves as a mechanism for stress reduction.

People who read live longer

The truth, Professor Mayes continued, is “the very fact of being better-educated is health-promoting” and “the more an individual child or adult is able to read, the more they know, the better educated they are, regardless of years of formal education.”

In fact, literacy—and the health literacy that comes with it—could also serve as a protective factor that preserves health and extends lives because it reduces a person’s risk for poorer health outcomes.

A 2006 study cited in the review found that people living with type 2 diabetes who had higher literacy skills showed improved glycemic control even if they hadn’t graduated from high school.

Research has also shown that people who read books for three and a half hours per week live approximately two years longer than their non-book reading peers, making it a potential ticket for a longer, healthier life.

“So, while yes, we hope that every child from day one is exposed to books, the other important part of that is being exposed to stories, being exposed to language, being exposed to people, helping children understand their world, helping them tell stories. And then books, in a sense, follow from that,” Professor Mayes said.

Pediatricians should promote childhood literacy

She went on to recommend that all pediatricians be trained in childhood literacy, so they can learn to “prescribe” reading and books for children as a form of early literacy guidance.

It was a Scholastic Book Fair at Yale New Haven Hospital during the summer of 2023 that motivated Mayes and the other authors to write their paper because it reinforced that books need to be wherever children go.

“It was very moving to see children in the hospital or coming to the clinic for medical care, see the books and excitedly run over to explore,” Professor Mayes said. 

“I remember vividly a boy who picked out these three books, ran to a chair in the waiting room, and just started to read. The waiting room was noisy with children running around, families being called for their appointments, and families checking out at the front desk. But he just kept reading in his world and didn’t even hear when his name was called. This is the magic of books—being transported to new and often faraway worlds.”