Researchers from Edinburgh and King’s College London followed 1,890 pairs of identical twins over nine years, to control for genetic and environmental factors. They found that children who were even slightly better at reading at the age of seven consistently outscored their siblings in IQ tests as teenagers. The link is strong enough, according to research fellow Dr Stuart Ritchie, to suggest that the act of reading itself boosts intelligence, rather than simply reflecting the fact that brighter children tend to be better readers. This suggests that tackling problems with reading at an early age could have huge benefits for children’s cognitive skills at a later stage. (The Week)

My (nearly) six year old grandson, whose command of the English language is rather good, scoops up armfuls of books from the local library. Delighted librarians let him. His younger siblings follow his lead. On one occasion, when he was younger, I agreed to read him a book, and he wouldn’t let me go home until I had read five of them. The parents don’t push them to read by themselves because they know the children will do that quickly enough when they are ready (grandson suddenly started to read this last weekend) such is their interest in everything and desire to learn. No one can foresee the future, but I for one am happy to have what seem to be budding Epicurean grandchildren. Nothing useful is achieved by making children do things before they are ready.