O3206: Shared Reading and Kindergarten School Readiness in the Context of Childhood Adversity

Background: School readiness (SR) encompasses a wide range of skills that impact children’s ability to succeed in school and later in life. Shared reading is considered an important strategy to assist children in gaining these skills, with more frequent shared reading predicting a decreased risk of developmental, social, and behavioral delays in preschool-age children. Adverse childhood experiences negatively affect a child’s SR, but it is unclear if shared reading could help mitigate that relationship. The objective of this study was to assess if shared reading is equally associated with improved school readiness among children with and without adverse childhood experiences (ACEs).

Methods: The 2020-2021 National Survey of Children’s Health data on children was used for data analysis. We captured children aged 3-5 years to assess their exposure to adverse childhood experiences (ACEs, dichotomized as any vs. none), participation in shared reading, and overall school readiness. Shared reading was classified as occurring 0-3 days/week, 4-6 days/week or every day. School readiness was evaluated based on four domains used to assess school readiness (Cognitive Development, Self-Regulation, Social-Emotional Development and Health), where each domain was scored as “on track,” “at risk,” or “needs support.”

Results: In total we had complete data for 17,545 children. We found 29% of children had been exposed to one or more ACEs. For shared reading, 50%, of children had shared reading experiences every day; 20% had shared reading experiences 4-6 days per week; 30% had shared reading experiences 0-3 days per week. Children who were read to more often were also associated with having a lower exposure to ACEs. 77% of children without exposure to ACEs had daily shared reading experiences while 23% of children with exposure to ACEs had daily shared reading experiences. Regarding school readiness, 29% of children met all 4 domains; 31% met 3 of the 4; 22% met 2 of the 4; 13% met 1 of the 4 and 6% met none. On ordinal logistic regression, daily shared reading was associated with 56% greater odds of higher school readiness among children not exposed to ACEs (skill attainment in the next higher category of school readiness; odds ratio [OR]: 1.56; 95% confidence interval [CI]: 1.29, 1.88; p< 0.001). For children who were exposed to ACEs, daily shared reading was also associated with higher school readiness (OR: 1.50; 95% CI: 1.06, 2.13; p=0.021), and the interaction between daily shared reading and exposure to ACEs was not statistically significant (p=0.777).

Conclusion: Shared reading was associated with improved school readiness in both children who have and have not been exposed to ACEs. However, children exposed to ACEs had fewer shared reading experiences. Future efforts should address the barriers that limit shared reading for children exposed to ACEs.