The Telegraph – Professor Peter Fonagy 
For anyone in the vastly busy day-to-day, having some time to read together perhaps at the end of the day can create a space for the kind of meeting of minds between parent and child which is developmentally so helpful to children. We take being able to focus for granted. Yet small children need to learn this skill, and they learn best when ‘trained’ by someone they care about. Reading for pleasure with children (going through a book together, talking about it, looking at the pictures) now has solid research evidence showing that it can improve language development and capacity for paying attention and also social and emotional outcomes.(more)