BidMyCleaning.com Banter

Early Readers Benefit from Household Order

Posted by Candice on November 3, 2009 at 23:51 pm

Clean House Helps Reading Skills

Research conducted by the National Center for Children and Families (NCCF) found a link between household chaos and children’s early reading skills. Household order was found to have a positive correlation with early reading skills and may include cleanliness, organization, routines. The research document references an earlier study by Dunifon et al. (2001) which found that adults’ education and income were predicted by the cleanliness of their parents’ home even accounting for parents’ schooling, income, and cognitive skills. This clean-house measure reflected a desire and ability to impose order in the household, which may reflect organization in other aspects of life such as work and parenting. The report posits that perhaps household order taps a more fundamental characteristic of parents or households, such as maternal industriousness, planning ability, or conscientiousness, that gives rise to both orderliness and better reading skills in children.

It can be hard for parents to juggle all the responsibilities of their careers as well as child care and still find the time to ensure that the home is kept neat and clean at all times. As if there isn’t enough guilt that comes with parenting now we have to worry about a messy house hindering our children’s ability to acquire the best reading skills. A dual income family may be more able to afford outsourcing the house cleaning or home organization but fortunately there are several other ways you can support your children’s reading ability.

So what should you do? Keep your home clean and in reasonable order and set up and maintain rules, schedules and routines. It is also important to model reading skills for your young children by reading yourself. Spending time reading with them as well as playing word games nourish reading skills. Finally ensure access to a large number of books on a wide variety of subjects are available to your children.