The Guardian recently reported, in an article by Liz Bury, on a study that found that "only 13% of parents read to their kids at night every day of the week." The title of the article is:
"Children's bedtime stories on the wane, according to survey"
It's a brief article, but says:
"A poll of 2,000 mothers with children aged 0-7 years, carried out by the clothing and homeware retailer Littlewoods, highlighted the extent of the change. Only 64% of respondents said they read their children bedtime stories, even though 91% were themselves read bedtime stories when young."
Participants said things like that they were too stressed, or didn't have time to read to their kids before bed, even though they think it's important. This part is sad: "Only 13% of respondents read a story to their children every night, but 75% recall being read to every night when they were kids."
I shared this link on my Facebook page with a sigh, and my friend Jennifer remarked that she would have to answer no to the question, because she tends to read to her kids at other times, rather than at bedtime. Which got me thinking that perhaps this survey wasn't really asking the right question. (To be fair, the survey was focused on whether bedtime reading was on the decline, more so than bigger picture questions. So it was the right question for them, but not for me.)
I've been helping the organization Read Aloud to spread their message, which is: Read Aloud for 15 Minutes. Every Child. Every Parent. Every Day. This is delightfully concrete, and I've been happy to share it. But I still see people saying: "But I want to read for more than 15 minutes." Or, "I can't read every day."
To me, the right message is something like:
Read aloud to
your child whenever you can, as often as you can, for as long as you can.
For many families, bedtime is the easiest time for reading aloud, because you have a
routine in place, and it's relatively straightforward to make reading aloud part of that. This is great when it works. But if you can’t read at night
without falling asleep after 5 minutes, or you have different kids of different
ages, and you're working on the older kids' homework, and you just can’t fit the reading in then, ok. Find another time.
It doesn’t matter if you read in the morning before
breakfast, or after lunch during quiet time, or before bed. It matters that
you:
- Always have books around that you can read to
your child, whether they are your family’s own books or library books.
- Try to say yes when your child asks you to read
aloud.
- Make reading part of your daily routine, no
matter how busy that routine is, by fitting it in somewhere.
- Keep reading together fun!
- Keep reading aloud to your child even after your
child can read to herself, for as long as she will let you.
These are the important things. These are things that you
can do as a parent that will make a difference in your child’s happiness now,
and future success later.
In my house, I tend to let read aloud time be dictated by
what my daughter requests. Sometimes she wants to read a couple of books before
even heading down for breakfast. Often she asks her babysitter to read to her
after lunch, in the time period that she used to nap. If a new picture book arrives in
the mail, she’ll usually want to read it right then. Same for times when she
arrives home from the library with new books. I can't always say yes to reading at any particular minute, but I try to say yes as frequently as possible.
We do usually read to her at bedtime. Mostly my husband
does the nighttime reading these days, because my daughter in a major “daddy
phase.” I’ll often sit nearby and read my own books, so we’re still together. But
sometimes she falls asleep on her own before we get to the bedtime reading,
and, well, there isn’t any. Especially if we’re out somewhere, and she falls
asleep on the way home (sound familiar, anyone?). But most of the time, she’s
been read to at some other point during the day. Some days she’s probably been read
to at 5 or 6 points during the day. So I figure that what we’re doing is
working for us, and I don’t get too hung up about the occasional missed night.
I know that I'm lucky because I work from home, and can sneak in extra reading time during the day. I'm lucky because I have other people who read to my daughter, too, and because I only have to worry about one child's schedule. I realize that it's going to get harder as my daughter gets older, and has homework and activities. But I'm going to try to keep this mantra in my head:
Read aloud to your child whenever you can, as often as you can, for as long as you can.
I'm going to try to seize, and appreciate, those moments, regardless of what time of day they occur.
How about you? Does your family read before bed, or at
other times, or both?
© 2013 by Jennifer Robinson of Jen Robinson's Book Page. All rights reserved. You can also follow me @JensBookPage or at my Growing Bookworms page on Facebook.
Pretending to play in the attic, when we have no attic, because that's what the Berenstain Bears do in the 
Initiating a spontaneous acting out of 
Making me recite "Peter Piper" over and over and over again, thanks to 
Recognizing Trixie on the cover of 
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There are lots of other books that I hope to read with my Baby Bookworm when the time is right. I hope that she will be as captivated by the work of 
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Apart from the above six titles, Baby Bookworm remains obsessed with Mercer Mayer's 
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The Cake that Mack Ate
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Self-Selection. Being able to pick her own books dramatically increased her excitement in reading said books. The few books that I picked out, we haven't read yet. The books that she picked out? We've read several of them 5 or 6 times already. We read her top picks (the favorite was 
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