The impact of COVID-19 on early childhood reading practices

• Published in: Journal of early childhood literacy 2024-03, Vol.24 (1), p.96-115
• Main Authors: Wheeler, Deborah L, Hill, Jennifer C
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Children & youth; COVID-19; Families & family life; Kindergarten; Oral reading; Parent-child relations; Parents & parenting; Reading acquisition; Reading comprehension
• ISSN: 1468-7984; 1741-2919
• DOI: 10.1177/14687984211044187

COVID-19 has changed the daily lives of families, impacted on work, social interactions, and mental health. Since spring 2020, parents have been working from home and children have been home from daycare and school. Parents are experiencing stress in an attempt to satisfy the demands of work, family, and COVID-19 concerns. Due to the fact that children have been home from daycare and school, parents have the sole responsibility of caring for and teaching their children until schools are able to fully and effectively meet the needs of educating students in an adapted format. Research provides a wealth of information documenting the advantages of parents reading to their children. Children benefit from read-alouds with parental interaction, and these benefits include an increase in oral language skills, reading comprehension, vocabulary, and an increase in motivation to read. The purpose of this study is to answer two questions: (1) Since parents were home more often with their children, were parents spending more quality time reading to their two-to four-year-old children? This can be defined as reading developmentally appropriate books to their children with their undivided attention; and (2) Since parents were home more often with their two-to four-year-old children, were parents reading more to their young children? Parents of pre-kindergarten students were surveyed to determine the answers to these questions.