1. Consider reading as part of your child's language development along with listening, speaking, and writing.

2. Reading starts in the home where children begin to understand and learn the language necessary to express things, events, thoughts, and feelings.

3. Early development of the knowledge required for reading comes from talking to your children and teaching them about the world.

4. Having long conversations at home with your children encourages them to think about experiences. They learn to construct meaning from these experiences and later have an advantage in learning to read.

5. Children can learn more about the written language when parents regularly do such things as point out letters from the child's name on signs and containers.

6. Most children will learn how to read. Whether they will read depends in part upon encouragement from their parents.

7. Parents lay the most important role in laying the foundation for learning to read. A parent is a child's first tutor and a child's enduring faith that sooner or later he or she will become a good reader.