An innovative program at Texas Children’s Hospital in Houston helps babies in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) and their family members bond over books.
Founded in 2019, the NICU Little Listeners Program was created to encourage parent-child bonding through reading.
“Our main goal is to help normalize the stressful NICU experience by encouraging parents to read to and talk to their babies,” said Dr. Christina W. Wong, a pediatric hospitalist in the Texas Children’s Hospital NICU and founder of Little Listeners. “No baby is too small or sick to be read to or spoken to, especially by parents and family.”
The Little Listeners Program hosts an annual five-day Read-A-Thon in September to celebrate National Literacy Month, as well as NICU Awareness Month. The theme for this year’s Read-A-Thon, “Blast Off with Reading,” is based on a book written by a former NICU mother, Shawna Keyes. Her book, The Adventures of Asher and Rocket, is about her son’s journey in the NICU. The third annual Little Listeners Read-a-Thon is September 16-20, 2024.
Our main goal is to help normalize the stressful NICU experience by encouraging parents to read to and talk to their babies.
– Dr. christina W. Wong
Wong explained how such a simple act—reading to a baby—has so many benefits for both the child and the parent or grandparent.
“In an ideal situation, parents would have been reading and talking to their baby at home. Parents in the NICU often do not realize that they can read and talk to their child, most often because they are focused on their treatment plan. Also, parents may not realize just how beneficial it can be to read to their baby,” Wong said. “During a time when parents feel completely overwhelmed, reading is not only something that can become a special bonding time with their baby but is a fundamentally important act that will help their baby’s brain, language, and speech development.”
Babies recognize their parents’ voices over others, so having a parent reading and talking to them is beneficial, Wong said. “Consistent reading has been shown to have positive effects on weight gain and bottle feeds, both of which are very important to our NICU patients.”
Through philanthropic donations, the Little Listeners Program provides free bilingual books to NICU families, as well as bookmarks with tips on reading to your child.
The program is part of the services provided by the Texas Children’s Hospital’s in-house library, which has thousands of books in its collection. The library serves both inpatients and outpatients and their families at the main hospital campus in the Texas Medical Center. Books can be checked out and read by patients, or read on-site by siblings and family members, said Catherine Zdunkewicz, Texas Children’s Hospital’s Library Coordinator. Many books are also given to patients to take home. (The NICU babies are given brand-new books, as these are the safest for them.)
“The motto of the library is ‘a little something for everyone,’ and when we started it was just children’s books. But as we’ve grown, we have both fiction and nonfiction, we have chapter books for kids, we have story books and board books,” Zdunkewicz said. The hospital library is also a frequent destination for physical, occupational, and speech therapists and their patients. Melman, one of the hospital’s facility dogs, also meets patients there (photo above is of Wong, Zdunkewicz, and Melman at a recent event.). Fully supported by the Houston Pi Beta Phi Alumnae Club, the newly renovated main library space is attractive and filled with books, puzzles, games, and DVDs.
September is a special time in the NICU, due to the annual Read-A-Thon to benefit Little Listeners. “I love to give books to babies, I love to give books to families,” Wong said.
“With the Little Listeners program, we are able to do more than just give books to our patients; we can give these families something to do to engage and bond with their baby. When you see the families reading to the babies, especially during Read-A-Thon, and see just how much extra bonding is going on—it’s wonderful. The moms are reading, the dads are reading, the families are reading, the grandparents are reading. It just makes you feel so good,” Wong said.
If you are interested in donating to the Little Listeners program, you can do so at www.texaschildrens.org/support. Under “Gift Designation,” please select “Specific Department or Program not listed” and type “Little Listeners Library” in the comment box. This will ensure that the Texas Children’s Hospital philanthropy department deposits your donation into the Little Listeners Library account.
More information is available on the Texas Children’s Hospital Libraries’ website.