A new report says that children who are not into reading or writing do face issues with their mental health. The study was carried out by the National Literacy Trust (NTL) and found that school children who like writing or enjoy reading fare three times better on the mental well-being meter compared to their peers who are disinterested in reading or writing. The percentage difference is quite a lot viz. 39.4 against 11.8. The survey involved the study of around 50K children and disclosed that around 40.3 percent of children with the aforementioned reading skills had high levels of mental well-being compared to 13.1 percent children who did not read had low levels of mental well-being. The report also mentioned that around 21.6 percent of children felt unhappy with their lives and 26.5 percent were clueless about coping with stress.
As per the director of NLT, children and youngsters today have to bear the brunt of lots of pressure be it school, social life or home. Hence, it’s our duty that we help our children to overcome the challenges that life throws and enable them to live healthy and happy life.
The joy of reading and writing does help a long way in molding the mental health of children. If helps a child cope through the stress or worries that he or she is experiencing besides giving them an opportunity to explore as well as understand difficult feelings. It also makes them feel less lonely.
Furthermore, the curriculum in school and pressures to perform leave very little time to children to devote time to do activities like reading or writing for pleasure. Again for poor families reading books can only happen if their kid is in school, the only place where he or she can have access to books. More importantly, accessibility to books is not the only idea. The bigger picture is about children themselves wanting to read books. It’s about generating that interest in them where they find time to read or write for themselves and their own joy and not anybody else’s.
Well, so if you want to help your child live a happy and stress free life then encourage them to read more and write more and see how they blossom mentally.
An active child shows interest in everything. They display happiness and feel good. They perform well academically too. Physical activities are a must for children to make them active all throughout the day. Read More
