Reading bedtime stories to your child improves cognitive skills, improves attention, personality and knowledge. It develops communication, boosts parent-child bonding, relieves anxiety, encourages independent reading, inspires children. It also promotes social and emotional development, becomes a habit and makes children happier than screen time.
Reading bedtime stories to your little one can be a lot of fun. As much as you enjoy reading different stories to your child, he/she longs for their stories. Not only they get to know a number of stories, but it also improves their communication skills, memory, and listening abilities. In this article, we will be considering 11 benefits of reading bedtime stories to your child:
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11 Important Things to Know About Reading Bedtime Stories to Your Kids
Cognitive Skills
When you read bedtime stories to your child, he/she is absorbing information about language by listening to the stories. He would also learn the art of reading from left to right as he continues to grow. Babies who are around a year old can develop their problem-solving skills and those around ten months can get to learn a few words only by listening to these stories.
Improves Attention
If you want to get your little one into the reading habit, engaging him in bedtime stories can be an excellent way to get this done. Not only this is a healthy habit, but it will also prove to be useful throughout their life. Make sure you read to her every night to improve her attention spans.
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Improves Personality and Knowledge
Bedtime stories can majorly help your little one in teaching them life lessons. Your baby may begin to look up for some people later in life and draw inspiration from them. This will help with the improvement of his personality and knowledge.
Develops Communication
Story reading is a great way to strengthen your baby’s vocabulary, sentence structure, communication skills, memory, listening abilities, and language recognition skills and that too from an early age. In fact, he may also learn to communicate through body language, verbal methods, written words, and listening.
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Boosts Parent-Child Bonding
As per the research, almost 60% of the parents use books to get their children open up to them and express their feelings. Whereas almost 54% of the parents believe that reading bedtime stories brings them closer to their child and is important for their bonding time.
Relives Anxiety
Story reading will help your baby relax his mind and body before going to bed. This healthy habit will help him get involved in an entirely different world and relieve them from all the anxiety and stress.
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Encourages Independent Reading
When you read stories to your child, it would make them want to read it by themselves too. this will be a lot beneficial in igniting a lifelong love of books within themselves.
Inspires Children
When you read stories to your child, it transports their minds to fictional worlds. Somewhere in their minds, they live the lives of characters in their imagination. They also begin to create stories of their own.
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Social and Emotional Development
Story reading will help your little one to develop ideas and illustrations about various things like toys, animals, etc. Later on, you may find her to be able to express her feelings and even make use of new vocabulary.
Becomes a Habit
When you read bedtime stories to your baby on a regular basis, it becomes a part of their life. With this, you will not have to constantly ask her to read something or the other when she grows up.
Makes Children Happier than Screen Time
According to the research, 90% are happier when reading and writing as compared to when they are watching their favorite cartoons. It is thus extremely important to encourage your child to switch off from the digital world and enjoy reading books.
Tips for Parents
Listed below are a few tips that you as a parent may consider:
- You can sing rhymes and make funny animal sounds.
- Cuddle with your little one while reading
- Games that will make them feel more connected, safe and warm.
- Always readout with excitement and joy. This will help them get associated with books.
- Make your baby look and answer questions. This will promote thinking skills.
- Use different emotions and sounds as this will foster the social and emotional development of your baby.
- Don’t worry about the repetition of the same story you have already read earlier as babies love and learn from this.
- Make sure you interact with your baby to make the most out of bedtime stories.
- Turn off television, radio and other such distractions.
Conclusion
Even if your kid can read a book by himself, you can still be a part of their bedtime story reading. This will only make your bond stronger with your child and you can also get to spend some happy time with your child.
Reference
https://www.parentcircle.com/article/bedtime-stories-for-kids-a-childs-introduction-to-the-magical-world-of-reading/
https://www.independent.ie/life/family/the-benefits-of-reading-bedtime-stories-38409165.html
https://www.theguardian.com/education/2008/may/13/schools.uk4
