Be patient if your child is slow to start reading

When parents lament that their children are not yet reading and consider hiring tutors and pricey evaluations to find out what's wrong with their six-year-olds, I tell them to be patient and keep reading to their young ones.

In most cases, when a child's ability catches up with his or her interest in the narrative, the lifelong reader is launched. Reframing the situation not as a problem, but as a sign that their child might just have high standards for what makes a good story, helps to alleviate some of the underlying anxiety.

As a mother of three children - two adolescent avid readers and one developing reader - I have some insight, butressed by a growing body of research in the area of brain development and functional readiness to read.

Dr Martha Denckla, director of the Developmental Cognitive Neurology Clinic at the Kennedy Krieger Institute and neuroscience researcher at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, is a leading expert in brain development and reading readiness. Regarding the trend in schools of teaching reading earlier and earlier, she says: "They are doing enormous harm by blithely disregarding the neurological readiness to learn these skills."

Books have been an integral part of our parenting since my son was born 14 years ago. When he was tiny and we lived in California, we made daily trips to the library and lugged home stacks of picture books, delighted in bookstores and attended a weekly local story time. Our evening routine after he brushed his teeth involved reading two picture books that he would carefully select to read together.

Besides the picture books, I read chapter books far beyond his reading ability to him as he fell asleep. Even when he didn't understand everything on a practical level, he absorbed the melody of the well-crafted tale as his language was forming. A good novel is as beautiful to hear as it is to read.