Although most of parents are well aware that bedtime story is key to develop literacy skills, many of them neglect reading or have prematurely stopped reading to their children. According to a recent survey by YouGov, the bedtime story ritual is abandoned when kids become independent readers, even if this is not their wish. 20 percent of parents involved in the study said they had stopped reading aloud to their kids before the age of nine. Another survey of more than 2,000 parents of children aged four to ten revealed that only 4 percent of them read to their child every night, 69 percent conceding they don’t have the time to do it.
“Whats really interesting is that as children acquire the skills to read themselves, parents back off,” said Catherine Bell, managing director of Scholastic. “When parents stopped, the children wanted them to continue. They thought it was a really special time with their parents and they felt really positive about it.” Author Michael Rosen thinks, for his part, that TV in the bedroom is the killer of bedtime stories. He says that, when he questions children about it, in general a majority of them declare watching TV before going to sleep.
Picture: Elisabeth Jerichau-Baumann painting of Hans Christian Andersen reading to some of her children (Wikipedia)
