The Tallahassee Democrat -- Tallahassee, FL

December 28, 2009
Lee M. Sanders

Today in America, there are more than 11 million children age 5 and under who are living in poverty.

Millions of these children will arrive on the first day of kindergarten already well behind their peers, unprepared to read and learn. Despite the billions of dollars Americans have invested in reading recovery programs, those children are highly likely to never catch up, placing them at increased risk for absenteeism, dropping out, juvenile delinquency, substance abuse and teenage pregnancy.

If we want to break the cycle of poverty and help children realize their tremendous innate potential, we must target children before they enter school, making it a priority to help them develop the basic skills that will enable them to excel.

That's why I became one of the 25,000 doctors and nurse practitioners nationwide who incorporate school readiness as a critical component of the standard care we provide for young children, beginning at 6 months of age, through the Reach Out and Read program. Reach Out and Read's evidence-based model includes the pediatric primary care provider giving each child a brand-new, age-appropriate book at every checkup, and speaking with the parents about the incredible importance of reading aloud every day.

Reach Out and Read was founded in 1989 by pediatricians and early childhood educators, and it has been proven to work by 13 research studies published since then. The 180,000 families in Florida served annually by Reach Out and Read read together more often, and their children enter kindergarten with both larger vocabularies and stronger language skills, and better prepared to succeed.

The deceptively simple program achieves such extraordinary results by directly addressing many of the obstacles that low-income children and families face and by actively engaging parents in the process.

Reading aloud to young children is proven to be one of the best activities to stimulate language and cognitive skills, yet fewer than 43 percent of parents in Florida — and only 34 percent of low-income parents — read to their children every day. Families living in poverty often lack access to libraries and children's bookstores — in fact, 61 percent of low-income families have no children's books at all in their homes. That's part of the reason why low-income children will hear up to 30 million fewer words than their more affluent peers before the age of 4 and, on average, will be able to recognize only nine letters of the alphabet at the age of 5.

Reach Out and Read capitalizes on the relationship between parents and pediatric health care providers, recognizing that parents are far more likely to take the advice to heart, and follow it, when it comes from a trusted caregiver. And Reach Out and Read provides the tools that parents need to act upon that advice — brand-new children's books.

So allow me to join your pediatrician in encouraging you to make it a New Year's resolution this year to read to your children every day. Together, we can break the cycle of poverty by ensuring that every child arrives at school ready to read and ready to learn.