Reading builds resilience among at-risk kids
As society moves towards the endemic stage of COVID, parents and schools return to a lifestyle that resembles more closely the pre-COVID era: less infections and transmittal, face-to-face learning, sports, play and activities.
The effect of COVID on children and their academic, emotional and physical wellbeing may not be clearly known for some time.
For children living in low socio-economic environments, or suffering maltreatment at home, COVID may have added further difficulty to their learning pathway through a lack of digital devices for online learning, a lack of physical learning materials such as books or even a lack of safe space to learn.
A University of South Australia study found that nearly 300,000 children aged 0-17 years had one or more child protection notifications with 105,000 the subject of an investigation and nearly 50,000 the subject of substantiated abuse or neglect.
The study found that victims of child maltreatment are generally more developmentally vulnerable than their peers at the start of school. Lead researcher, Professor Leonie Segal says there is an acute need to support these children and their families, before the children start school, with reading being a key factor for success.
Karen Baicker of YCSC-Scholastic Collaborative for Child & Family Resilience notes that literacy can help build resilience in five ways:
- Relieving Stress – sitting with a child and reading is comforting.
- Building Empathy – through the characters in the story.
- Creating Connections – reading helps children learn to share stories to other children and adults.
- Fostering Belonging – children may relate to the book’s characters as being like themselves.
- Boosting Pride – children of all ages feel accomplished when they finish a book.
“A good start to school is predictive of later outcomes, so it’s vital that we not only identify those at risk early on, but also find ways to support children’s emotional, social and physical development, before they start school,” Prof Segal said.
“Understanding which attributes can help young children to be more resilient – or conversely which factors can put them at greater risk – can form the basis of interventions for child victims of maltreatment to improve life trajectories.
“Every child deserves the chance for a bright future. We must not overlook those most at risk.”
Sources and further reading:
https://www.unisa.edu.au/media-centre/Releases/2022/reading-builds-resilience-among-at-risk-kids/
https://medicine.yale.edu/news-article/using-literacy-to-boost-your-childs-health-and-resilience/