Reading and The Mind

In a paper called What Reading Does for the Mind, Anne E. Cunningham, associate professor of cognition and development at the University of California, Berkeley, discusses the effects that reading has on the mind:

• increases verbal intelligence (vocabulary) thus making us smarter in many areas
• provides us with accurate general knowledge and limits the incorrect information absorbed or believed as truth
• improves the quality of many intellectual activities as we grow older which the preserves much of our cognitive capacities

Reading will help keep the mind alert in our later years! It is never too late to start reading either. The more you read, the better you get at reading, the faster you read and eventually you will have a habit of reading. Don’t say, “As long as I do cross word puzzles I will be fine.” That is like saying, “If I do push ups my entire body will be fit.” Read long books with ideas and words that stretch your mind.

I have been an avid reader all my life and even before I could read by myself, I remember my mother reading to me every night. That was one of those priceless gifts.

Remember this paper in the elementary grades?

I loved this paper, learning to write correctly and reading. Everything to do with “school” just thrilled me! I loved to learn and still do enjoy the whole process of learning something new.

So you can imagine how excited I was to teach my daughter to read. To my despair, she did not like reading at all. Every reading assignment for school, I would sit and read to her because she could not focus on the story when she read it alone. I didn’t give up and as I explained yesterday, she eventually started reading and comprehending on her own.

I bought the last book in the Twilight series for my daughter.

The moment we get home, she begins to read…

and read…

and read…

and she doesn’t go to sleep…

until 3:00 the next afternoon…

which is 18 hours after she started the book.

I think I can say that I’m sure she loves to read.

Oh, so I left out a cute part of my story. While in the bookstore I told Alyssa that I follow the blog of a real author and she should check it out. So we look up the books of my blogging friend, Ashley Ladd, and my daughter freaks out! She was very cute and I think I’m not quite as “nerdy” as I was before this revelation. Thank you Ashley!