Beginning at Birth – the new emphasis from National Reach Out and Read…ROR-KC has been doing this for 27 years!!

Followers of Reach Out and Read KC know that from its inception our program began at the first post birth clinic visit. This is when a family brings their 3-5 day-old newborn for the first checkup.  Our founders, Drs Jean Harty and Michele Kilo, incorporated the science of brain development into their strategy for deploying primary care providers with the gift of a book and prescription to read beginning at that very first pediatric visit. Now, National ROR, our parent organization, is just beginning the emphasis on those first 6 months of life – and ROR-KC is recognized as being on the forefront of this initiative. 

Science tells us that the most rapid growth of a human’s brain takes place in the first 1000 days of life! We are born with all the neurons that we are going to have at birth. However, that is not the end of the brain development story!  Every second more than 1 million connections are being made between the neurons in this newborn babies’ brain.  These connections can be either healthy or not, in part depending on the environment in which a child is raised.  Healthy connections affect later emotional, social, language and speech development among many other aspects. If children do not have frequent positive interactions with caregivers, the connections made will not be healthy ones.  These connections in the first 1000 days  impact an individual life long, for better or for worse. For healthy connections, it is critical that babies and toddlers have frequent, positive interactions with their caregivers to capture the opportunity for healthy brain development.  

Birth of a  baby is a time when families are developing lots of new routines as they incorporate a new baby into their lives.   What better time to introduce the prescription to read which includes the importance not only of sharing books and stories with babies, but also cuddling/snuggling these youngest children. The conversation and the physical closeness that happens with book sharing create moments of love, moments that matter in the development of healthy early brain development and healthy early relationships between a child and caregiver.   

Thanks to you, our donors, we have not had to worry how to fund those books.  You cannot imagine the difference your donations make to not only the joy that kids, families and providers experience every day, but also to that critical brain development of the children we serve.  For some fascinating information on infant brain development go to:

• Brain Architecture
• Three Core Concepts in Early Development