The Importance Of Bed Time Stories

As a parent you probably read your kids bedtime stories like I do. What you may not realize is how important bedtime stories can be. Reading together is an important element to your child’s success in reading and creativity, but this is also a time in which you and your child can spend enjoying each other’s company, and sharing your love for one another. It is a process in which many special memories are created that involve you and your child, as well as a time when children can pay special attention to the story, the characters, the plot, and the lessons that can be learned from the story that they are listening to. Here are some information on the importance of bedtime stories.

Daily Routine

One of the reasons that the importance of bedtime stories is often highlighted by professionals who work with children is that it offers an opportunity to establish a daily routine. Parents and children often live extremely busy lives. There are many responsibilities that must be attended to throughout the day, such as work, school, chores, errands, extracurricular activities, homework, cooking, and similar types of events. Once the day has calmed and is approaching the end, children and parents alike can be comforted by the fact that they get to spend a little quality time together. In addition to this, children need to have some sort of daily routine in their lives. Why not making it reading an intriguing bedtime story?

Bonding with your Child

This is from personal experience. Being there for your child when you start and end the day is a great way to help build a closer bond with your child. As you work to spend time reading a bedtime story with your child, it helps create a unique bond between the two of you. As you read the stories, you can engage in open discussions about the characters that are part of the story, the places in which the stories depict, how the characters interact with one another, the problem and the resolution of the story, as well as any important lessons and values that are expressed in the story. This is a great time to hear the opinions of your child, and for them to hear yours. You can just enjoy a simple conversation while getting to know your child and teaching them your expectations on their behavior and words.

Reading Preparedness

The importance of bedtime stories includes the fact that it assists in reading preparedness. This is especially true if you read to a young child in their toddler years. It is during these years in which the brain is developing and growing the most. Children should be exposed to as many books, words, and sounds as possible so that they will develop into masters of reading and comprehension. By listening to the stories that you read, children can see and hear important sight words, learn how to pronounce appropriately, and expand their vocabularies. All of these elements are absolutely essential to ensuring that your child becomes a successful reader when they reach the appropriate age for this particular milestone in their lives.

Comprehension and Logic 

When children are exposed to bedtime stories and other types of literature throughout the day, it helps them develop comprehension and logic skills that are important to both the communication process and the development of educational skills. Children learn the components of a story, they learn how to predict events that happen in a story, and they learn how to recall events in a particular sequence about stories that they have heard. They can also learn how to make sense of real life situations through the means of imaginative and entertaining characters. By helping your child in the area of comprehension and logic through the means of bedtime stories, you are providing them with a skill set that will be beneficial all through their educational career.

Communication

The importance of bedtime stories also includes instilling important elements of communication in your child. We all communicate through written word, verbal methods, listening, and body language. Reading helps instill a higher sense of confidence in a child that is learning how to communicate effectively. Not only do the actual stories assist in raising awareness to communicating with others, but the conversations that you have with your child about the stories that you share together also helps in this area. You will find that the vocabulary that your child uses advances and that the descriptive phrases that they use to describe what they feel, think, and what to express to you become more in tune.

Morals and Values

Most of the books and stories that are classified as appropriate for children contain important morals and values. These morals and values often reflect how people should treat themselves, how they should treat others, and what is truly important in life. As parents, we expect our children to know and understand our moral expectations that we have for them, and the ways in which we feel that they should act. Considering that their minds are in a state of continual growth at a young age, it is often difficult to explain to them these expectations and the impact that they have on ourselves as well as others. However, a story brings these expectations and explanations to life in the eyes of a child.

Summary

 
As you can see, the importance of bedtime stories is more than just sharing a cute story. There are many advantages to sharing this time with your child. The advantages that you have been introduced to here include the following:

1. Daily Routine

2. Bonding

3. Reading Preparedness

4. Comprehension and Logic

5. Communication

6. Morals and Values

Take advantage of the importance of bedtime stories and incorporate them into your child’s life – you will both be glad that you did!I know I charish every moment.

Kevin – More4kids

http://www.more4kids.info/728/importance-of-bedtime-stories/

10 Psychological Studies Every Parent Should Know About

One of the many reasons parenting is an impossible job is that everyone is giving you advice, and much of it is rubbish. Frankly, it’s amazing we've all made it this far. So, bucking the trend of random anecdote and superstition, here are ten recent psychology studies that every parent should know.

1. Parents are happier than non-parents
In recent years some studies have suggested that the pleasures of having children are outweighed by the pains.

“Ha!” said parents to themselves, secretly, “I knew it!”

Not so fast though: new research has found that, on average, parents feel better than non-parents each day and derive more pleasure from caring for their children than from other activities (Nelson et al.,. 2013).

Fathers, in particular, derive high levels of positive emotions and happiness from their children.

2. Putting your child first is worth it
Underlining the pleasures of having children, research finds that child-centric attitudes are beneficial.

A study by Ashton-James et al. (2013) found that parents who were the most child-centric were also happier and derived greater meaning in life from having children.

Performing child-care activities was associated with greater meaning and fewer negative feelings.

“These findings suggest that the more care and attention people give to others, the more happiness and meaning they experience. From this perspective, the more invested parents are in their children’s well-being — that is, the more ‘child centric’ parents are — the more happiness and meaning they will derive from parenting.” (Ashton-James et al., 2013)

So, what’s good for your kids, is also good for you.

3. Helicopter parenting may be depressing
As with many things in life, though, it’s a fine line between caring and smothering; especially when children have grown up.

Schiffrin et al. (2013) asked 297 undergraduate students about their parents’ behaviour and how they felt about it.

The study found links between ‘helicopter parenting’ and higher levels of depression amongst the students, as well as lower levels of autonomy, relatedness and competence.

“Parents should keep in mind how developmentally appropriate their involvement is and learn to adjust their parenting style when their children feel that they are hovering too closely.” (Schiffrin et al., 2013)

4. Avoid strict discipline
Around 90% of American parents admit at least one instance of using strict verbal discipline with their children, such as calling names or swearing at them.

Rather than helping keep adolescents in line, though, be aware that this may just exacerbate the problem.

A study of 967 US families found that harsh verbal discipline at 13-years-old predicted worse behaviour in the next year (Wang et al., 2013).

And it didn’t help if parents had a strong bond with their children. The study’s lead author Ming-Te Wang explained:

“The notion that harsh discipline is without consequence, once there is a strong parent-child bond–that the adolescent will understand that ‘they’re doing this because they love me’–is misguided because parents’ warmth didn’t lessen the effects of harsh verbal discipline. Indeed, harsh verbal discipline appears to be detrimental in all circumstances.”

5. Regular bedtimes
Regular bedtimes really matter to children’s developing brains.

Researchers followed 11,000 children from when they were 3-years old to the age of 7 to measure the effects of bedtimes on cognitive function, (Kelly et al., 2013).

The researchers found that:

“…irregular bedtimes at 3 years of age were associated with lower scores in reading, maths, and spatial awareness in both boys and girls, suggesting that around the age of 3 could be a sensitive period for cognitive development.”

Regular bedtimes are important for both boys and girls and the earlier these can be implemented, the better for cognitive performance.

6. Do the chores together
Bringing up happy children is easier if Mum and Dad’s relationship isn’t too rocky. One frequent bone of contention between parents is the chores.

A trick for achieving marital satisfaction over the chores is to do them together.

When partners perform their chores at the same time–no matter who is doing what–both people are more satisfied with the division of labour (Galovan et al., 2013).

7. Limit infant TV viewing
The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends that children should watch no more than two hours of TV per day after two years of age, and none before that age.

Here’s why: a new study that followed almost 2,000 Canadian children from birth found that an extra hour’s TV viewing at 2.5-years-old predicted worse performance later when they attended kindergarten (Pagani et al., 2013).

The more children exceeded this recommendation at 2.5 years old, the worse their vocabulary, math and motor skills were at 5-years-old.

More on this study: One Extra Hour of TV Reduces Toddlers’ Kindergarten Chances

8. Exercise boosts kids’ school performance
Kids are increasingly sedentary and, as I frequently write here on PsyBlog, exercise is a wonderful way to boost brain power, and it has many other benefits (see 20 Wonderful Effects Exercise Has on the Mind).

A new study of 11-year-olds has found that moderate to vigorous exercise was associated with increased academic performance in English, Maths and Science (Booth et al., 2013).

These gains from exercise were also seen in exams taken at 16-years-old.

Interestingly, girls’ science results benefited the most from extra exercise.

9. Dangers of intense mothering
Some women say that taking care of children is more stressful than being at work. There are also links between child-rearing and stress and guilt.

How can we square this with the reports and research findings that children fill your life with joy and meaning?

It may be down to differences in attitudes to parenting. In particular, being an ‘intense mother’ may be bad for you.

In their study of 181 mothers of children under 5, Rizzo et al. (2012)found that mothers who most strongly endorsed the idea that children were sacred and that women are better parents than men, were more likely to be depressed and experience less satisfaction with life.

Yes, nurture your children, but don’t sacrifice your own mental health.

10. Why siblings are so different
Anyone with more than one child will have noticed a curious thing: their personalities are often very dissimilar.

In fact, according to a study by Plomin and Daniels (1987), siblings have no more in common in their personalities than two completely unrelated strangers.

This is very weird given that 50% of their genetic code is identical.

The answer isn’t in the genes at all, but in the environment in which children grow up.

Far from having the same environments, each child has:
a different relationship with their parents,
a different relationship with their other siblings,
different friends and experiences at school…

…and so on.

And all these differences add up to quite remarkable dissimilarities between siblings–often such that if they didn’t look alike, you’d never know they were related.

All this means, of course, that because their personalities are often so different, parenting strategies that work with one child, may not work with another.

It’s just one more challenge of being a parent!

http://www.spring.org.uk/2013/11/10-current-psychology-studies-every-parent-should-know.php