How Reading and Storytelling Can Improve a Child’s Health

Learning how to read is essential to a child’s intellectual development. But could reading and other literacy skills, such as storytelling, also be good for a child’s physical and mental health?

There is a strong, positive relationship between childhood literacy and health outcomes in adulthood, according to Linda Mayes, MD, chair and Arnold Gesell Professor of Child Psychiatry in the Yale Child Study Center, and professor of pediatrics and psychiatry at Yale School of Medicine. Mayes believes that literacy needs to begin in early childhood—and to be encouraged by adults long before a child even starts school.

“Literacy is the capacity to create a narrative,” said Mayes. “We typically think of literacy just as reading, but it’s also being able to narrate your life; having the ability to tell stories brings others in. It also helps you understand your life.”

In a review published in Frontiers in 2024, Mayes and colleagues gave warning about a recent decline in childhood literacy in the United States and a lack of children meeting baseline literacy standards established by the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP).

According to the National Assessment of Educational Progress’ (NAEP) testing in 2022, 37% of fourth-graders performed below their basic reading level, representing a stark 14% drop since 1992 and a three-point drop just since 2019, the biggest reduction in scores since the testing began.

Mayes, who collaborated with Scholastic Publishers for this review, shared that in the education sector, there is a strong understanding of the importance of childhood literacy. But, she said, many may not realize that promoting literacy also means promoting health.

“The more we invest in education, the more we're investing in children's health and a healthy community,” Mayes explained while adding that the topic should be approached as a collaboration among families, educators, and healthcare providers.

Mayes explained three ways that literacy in childhood may improve lifelong health. To start, she said, literacy can promote understanding, including what a young person can do to live a healthier life and become a healthy adult.

Mayes added that literacy helps children expand their worlds, providing new role models, and helping them see the different ways they can live their lives.

Similarly, literacy can help build social connections, in part by helping young people share the stories they know with others. This also can expand their social network by amplifying their ability to deepen and connect with a diversity of people.

Mayes pointed out that it is known in the scientific community that reading and having a rich literary world can help manage one’s stress, uncertainties, daily life, and emotions. In turn, being connected with others has a positive impact on health as it serves as a mechanism for stress reduction.

The truth, Mayes said, is “the very fact of being better-educated is health-promoting” and “the more an individual child or adult is able to read, the more they know, the better educated they are, regardless of years of formal education.”

In fact, literacy—and the health literacy that comes with it—could also serve as a protective factor that preserves health and extends lives because it reduces a person’s risk for poorer health outcomes.

A 2006 study cited in the review found that people living with type 2 diabetes who had higher literacy skills showed improved glycemic control even if they hadn’t graduated from high school.

Research has also shown that people who read books for three and a half hours per week live approximately two years longer than their non-book reading peers, making it a potential ticket for a longer, healthier life.

“So, while yes, we hope that every child from day one is exposed to books, the other important part of that is being exposed to stories, being exposed to language, being exposed to people, helping children understand their world, helping them tell stories. And then books, in a sense, follow from that,” Mayes said.

The COVID-19 pandemic, due to closed schools, had a negative impact on child literacy. Ninety-three percent of students all over the country engaged in distance learning, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Due to distance learning, children weren’t exposed to talking, reading, and stories as much as when they attended school in person, according to Mayes.

Research cited in the review suggests that 67% of kindergarten literacy skills were lost during the pandemic. Still, Mayes said that this can be remedied.

In fact, Mayes noted that it’s not just during childhood that deficits in literacy can be countered with intensified exposure and attention to books, talking, stories, language, and people who can support them.

Adults can learn to read through programs such as the national organization Literacy Volunteers, particularly its chapter in New Haven, Mayes added. “It may take them longer, but they can learn. This is the good thing about our very plastic human brain, we can learn at all ages. It may not be as proficient as if learned earlier, but change is possible.”

Initiatives that promote childhood literacy include work by the non-profit organization Reach Out & Read, which gives books to children from birth to age 5 at their pediatrician appointments so that kids can build an in-home library that fosters reading and creating stories with the whole family.

Mayes recommended that all pediatricians be trained in childhood literacy, so they can learn to “prescribe” reading and books for children as a form of early literacy guidance.

It was a Scholastic Book Fair at Yale New Haven Hospital during the summer of 2023 that motivated Mayes and the other authors to write their paper because it reinforced that books need to be wherever children go.

“It was very moving to see children in the hospital or coming to the clinic for medical care see the books and excitedly run over to explore, Mayes said. “I remember vividly a boy who picked out these three books, ran to a chair in the waiting room, and just started to read. The waiting room was noisy with children running around, families being called for their appointments, and families checking out at the front desk. But he just kept reading in his world and didn’t even hear when his name was called. This is the magic of books—being transported to new and often faraway worlds.”