Children who hear more words from their parents enter kindergarten with better vocabularies. And children’s vocabulary in kindergarten, in turn, is strongly correlated with 10th-grade reading.

Before patients in my pediatric practice enter kindergarten, I will have given each one at least 10 books. At six months, they often chew on their board books. By preschool age, they squirm with happy anticipation. By this time, the parents and I will have discussed - and often shared - the purpose and pleasure of reading aloud.

The guidance is designed to help parents help their children develop the oral language skills and vocabulary that lead to literacy - certainly something that should concern us all. I am dispensing much more than a prescription for later success as readers and students; I am also prescribing the two-way communication that fosters healthy development and a strong parent-child relationship.

The recent report released by Strategies for Children, “Turning the Page: Refocusing Massachusetts for Reading Success,” reinforces my commitment to deliver this message and find other ways to support children’s development as readers. Research indicates that three-quarters of children who can not read well by the end of third grade are destined to struggle through math, history and science as well as English. They are far less likely to finish high school or attend college. They are more apt to be depressed and suffer other problems.

Parents are their children’s first and most important teachers, with an enormous amount to contribute to a child’s language development. It’s simple, it’s cheap and it doesn’t require much education. It only requires love and attention.

Just by talking with their children, parents help them become better readers, better able to communicate and better behaved. In my practice, I see hundreds of parents and children interacting. Some slow down, explain to their children what’s going on, listen to their fears and reassure them. They are teaching the value of communication. These words, uttered in love, form the basis of language development that later becomes literacy and the glue of human relationships.

Research shows that children who hear more words from their parents enter kindergarten with better vocabularies. And children’s vocabulary in kindergarten, in turn, is strongly correlated with 10th-grade reading.

Interaction is the basis of learning: Not speaking at children, but speaking and listening, having a conversation, engaging in playful talk, finding opportunities to gently teach children about the world around them.

Young children first associate books with the comfort of a parent’s lap. The words and sounds repeat each time the book is read, establishing the relationship between pictures and words. These simple characteristics of language - loving human interaction, the relationship of the printed word to the spoken word, the ability to make oneself understood, the way words communicate information - lead to reading with comprehension. As the new report notes, Massachusetts children are better at the mechanics of reading - decoding words - than at understanding what they’re reading.

We need to ensure that all children have access to high-quality early education and care, one of the few educational strategies demonstrated to have a positive effect on later academic achievement. We need early educators, primary grade teachers and administrators who are well-trained in language development and literacy. We need to identify children at risk of reading problems earlier, while their brains are still in those phenomenally dynamic early developmental stages.

Some of the most important changes start at home. Talk to your children. Read to them. Play with them. And enjoy. That’s the real secret. It’s a lot of fun.