A new study from Booktrust has revealed that only 19% of 16-24 year-old fathers say they enjoy reading at bedtime with their children, and, while this may not be quite the national disaster that some coverage of the study is making it out to be (the 81% of 16 – 24 year old fathers who don’t enjoy reading actually represent a relatively small figure overall), there’s also been countless pieces of research into why bedtime reading is a valuable exercise, and so it’s clearly a number that could do with some improving.
Booktrust have provided some really great suggestions for bedtime reading on their website, and in the past we’ve written about some of our favourite books about bedtime.
But we do also recognise that it’s not always possible, for whatever reason, for parents to read to their children every night, which is why we’ve launched programmes like Stories Aloud, which provides free digital audio readings for each of our paperback picture books (along with music and sound effects), giving young children another way of having stories read aloud to them.
And if you find reading to your children at bedtime challenging, we’d love to hear from you. Do you read to your children every night, or every week, or every month? Have you found ways of making it easier? Are there particular sorts of stories that you and your children enjoy at bedtime? Have you adjusted your schedule in order to make sure it happens? What’s worked well for you? Do share your thoughts in the comments below, on Twitter, or – if you’d like – with a guest blog (just email [email protected] if you’d like to write one) on your own experience.
