Why reading matters. The development of a read-a-thon for neonatal intensive care units to encourage neonatal exposure to language

Background: The neonatal intensive care unit is an unfamiliar environment to parents and infants, fraught with noxious stimuli including the sound of alarms and the experience of pain and stress. Encouraging opportunities for a baby in the NICU to be exposed to purposeful language from parents every day is a way forward for the infants future language and literacy development and their bonding and attachment with caregivers. Methods: A cross sectional anonymous electronic survey design was utilised to explore parent perceptions both pre and post intervention of the read-a-thon initiative and the provision of reading resources to parents. Intervention: The Little Reader's Read-a-thon was an initiative to promote reading aloud to infants in the NICU as it is a known key predictor of future literacy and language skills at school age. Results: Through this initiative, parental engagement in reading aloud to their baby in the first week of life doubled. Barriers to parental reading aloud to an infant in the NICU were identified including the lack of privacy and being able to hold their baby during reading. Conclusions: Providing local parent resources and facilitating an annual read-a-thon encouraging reading from birth has more than doubled the instances of reading to baby within the first week of life. Parents benefit from support and encouragement to read to their baby, however there are some enabling and disabling factors which NICUs should consider.