The childhood tradition of a bedtime story is in serious peril, as experts warn that parents are not making the time to read to their children at the end of the working day and stop reading to them at too young an age.
“Parents lead very, very busy lives,” said Diana Gerald, chief executive of the Book Trust, which encourages children and families to enjoy books and develop their reading skills. “We live in a world where parents are juggling work and home life. Lots of parents are working shifts and there’s a lot of pressure on families. People are increasing their hours.”
Stopping too soon
A recent survey, by YouGov for the children’s publisher Scholastic, revealed last week that many parents stop reading to their children when they become independent readers, even if the child isn’t ready to lose their bedtime story. The study found that 83 per cent of children enjoyed being read aloud to, with 68 per cent describing it as a special time with their parents. (“It felt so warm, so spirit-rising,” as one 11-year-old boy put it.) One in five of the parents surveyed in the study stopped reading aloud to their children before the age of nine, and almost a third of children aged six to 11 whose parents had stopped reading aloud to them wanted them to carry on.
Where’s the motivation?
Frank Cottrell Boyce, who won the 2004 Carnegie medal for his first children’s book, Millions, was dismayed by the findings. “The joy of a bedtime story is the key to developing a love of reading in children”, he said — more so than literacy classes in school, which can be “a very negative experience”, for the many children he meets during visits to schools, whose first experience of books is in the classroom.
“They’re being taught to read before anyone has shared with them the pleasure of reading — so what motivation have they got to learn?” said Cottrell Boyce. “Even the ones that attain high levels of ‘literacy’ are in danger of achieving that without ever experiencing point of reading.”
A survey by Settle Stories, an arts and heritage charity, of more than 2,000 parents with children aged four to 10 claimed that only 4 per cent read a bedtime story to their child every night, with 69 per cent saying they did not have the time. In February, a study by TomTom of 1,000 parents of children aged one to 10 found that 34 per cent never read a bedtime story to their children, with 29 per cent blaming late working and 26 per cent the daily commute.
“Parents have definitely got the message they need to read to their children up to the age of five or six,” said Catherine Bell, managing director of Scholastic. “What’s really interesting [is that] as children acquire the skills to read themselves, parents back off. It comes across really clearly: 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.”
Source: www.theguardian.com
