Children's test results 'helped by bedtime stories'

 

It’s good for your child, it’s good for you, it’s fun and intimate and collaborative. It is one of the great pleasures of parenthood, and definitely one of the things that is missed when your child has grown. All this and it is non fattening! What is it?  Snuggling up in the warm coziness of  bedtime and  reading to your children.

 

Reading to your children at bedtime  is not a only one life’s great  joyous experiences,  a report out this week in the UK makes it very clear that it is the biggest gift you can give them with regard to helping them achieve at school.

 

For over forty years it has been known that the two major factors influencing achievement in schools are the social class and educational levels of the parents. The conventional wisdom, borne out by a multitude of studies, is that it is these two factors that determined the child’s educational achievement. Parents did not have to do anything specific with their children, they just had to be a certain types of people!

 

In Delhi we had institutionalized these factors into our admission process. Meeting the parents of prospective students, and taking those whose parents are upper middle class and educationally qualified is the way ‘prestigious’ schools use to ensure that they were getting the “right” kinds of parents. - Those who are most likely to have academically achieving  children. - Now schools will also need to ask whether the parents are reading to their children to gauge whether the children are likely to do well.

 

The new research shows that children brought up in a home that continues to regard reading as a source of entertainment are far more likely to achieve higher reading standards in national curriculum tests. The report argues that there is a need to recognize the importance of parental involvement in children's reading habits and that this involvement must  not decrease just because the child enters school.

 

The UK report, part of a nationwide Family Reading Campaign mounted by the National Literacy Trust and the BBC, states that during the first four years of a child's life, a majority of parents (53 per cent) read to their children every day or night. By the time they reach the age of five to eight, this tails off to 37 per cent. Between the ages of eight and 12, it falls to 21 per cent. It claims that too many parents stop reading bedtime stories to their children once they start school and that stopping reading to your child is lessening his or her chances of academic success.

 

Sadly the report also shows that there has been a decline in enjoyment of reading over the past five years. Fifty-five per cent of 11-year-old boys now say they enjoy reading - compared with 70 per cent five years ago. The percentage of girls has declined from 85 per cent to 75 per cent in the same period. Thirteen per cent of youngsters said they disliked reading - compared with an international average of only 6 per cent.

 

So if you want your children to do well in school spend time reading those bedtime stories, and do it until your child is a teenager! It’s a beautiful part of the parenting experience and It’s good for them, and good for your relationship with them - and once that time is gone you will miss it. I know I do.