Reading to tots zips up thought processes

You can boost your child's intelligence by spending time with your child on your lap, reading, from the age of one or even younger. To make the most of story time, read interactively in a way that encourages your child to talk and ask questions as well as listen.

It was once thought that a baby's brain structure was genetically predetermined at birth, but it is now known that the brain actually continues to grow and develop so that a child's early experiences have a major impact on the brain's architecture.

The time you spend reading with your young child boosts brain development and helps set valuable patterns that will last through school and beyond. "If we know anything about brain development, it is that it has plasticity," says Ellen Galinsky, president of the Families and Work Institute in New York City. During the first three years of life a child's environment - especially the home - has a major influence on brain development, according to a report done for Galinsky's Families and Work Institute called Rethinking the Brain: New Insights Into Early Development.

The report says that thinking hinges on the rapid passage of signals throughout the brain. The more synapses a child's brain develops, the more quickly and efficiently the brain can make the multiple connections we know as thought processes.