The Best Bedtime Stories for Kids

Back in the day, not every parent had a book to read from, but fairytales were passed on from generation to generation and everybody knew them by heart. Aside from the actual magic of the story, it was a wonderful chance to spend time with our parents or grandparents at the end of the day.

The Best Bedtime Stories for Kids

You may want to read: Best Baby Books

Benefits of Reading Bedtime Stories

Bedtime stories are a wonderful way to bond with your children and get their imagination going regardless of how young they are. Even when you read a story to a baby that doesn’t understand anything you’re saying, just them hearing the sound of your voice can be incredibly soothing. Bedtimes stories can bring a huge number of benefits into your child’s life, such as:

— Age Range

Depending on the age of your child, bedtime stories can really sharpen their memory. When they’re listening to a story, children will make an effort to remember what they’ve heard so their minds can connect characters with places and storylines. You can also pause the story each time a character reappears and make sure they remember who that character was.

— Vocabulary

Bedtime stories will help enrich your child’s vocabulary and it will improve their language. Reading is, in fact, an activity that helps improve one’s vocabulary at just about any age. When a book captivates you and you come across a word you don’t know, you’ll most likely look up its definition and remember it for later. If there are words in the story that the child doesn’t understand, they’ll most likely stop you and ask what it means. If need be, you can also use pictures to help your children memorize new words they hear in your stories.

— Social Science

Stories can teach your children a lot about people and social circumstances. Plenty of stories are focused on thriving, on the concepts of “good” and “bad”, on explaining how family and friends interact with one another and are always there for each other. Stories talk about ambitions, life journeys, honor, commitment, and other such concepts that your child can become familiar with from an early age. Bedtime stories can also help children develop perspective.

— Stimulates Imagination

Stories go above and beyond what goes on in the real world, and this is good not just because it can stimulate a kid’s imagination, but also because it helps them gain more knowledge of the things they don’t get a chance to see every day. If you have a 3-year-old, they probably don’t get to experience many examples of bravery and honor, but stories can help them get acquainted with these concepts, teaching them about values that are important even if they’re not encountered at such a young age.

— The Good and the Bad

By reading them bedtime stories with complex plots and many characters, children will begin to learn more about people. In time, they will be able to identify likes and dislikes and figure out who the heroes and who the bad guys are. This is the knowledge that they can later associate with real-life encounters. Don’t underestimate children because their brain’s ability to connect what they learn from stories with real-life events is mind-blowing.

— Bonding

In today’s modern age, we can’t get over the fact that parents are spending less and less time with their children. This is not an article meant to scold parents because we know the effort it takes not to collapse after a hard day’s work needed to provide for the family and the actual stuff that one has to do around the house (from cooking, doing dishes, making sure everyone’s teeth are clean, packing lunches for the next day, etc.).

Managing to integrate even 30 minutes of story reading before bedtime isn’t just beneficial to the child, but it’s also a great way to improve the parent-child relationship. Children will feel more loved and look forward to this quality time spent with either of their parents, but it also helps establish a healthy sleeping routine for them. Since they love bedtime stories, they will associate going to bed with something pleasant, something to look forward to every night.

Tips for Pleasant Story Time

Regardless of whether you choose to read stories to your child or you have audiobooks that they like to listen to, here are some tips that can make story time more pleasant and entertaining for children:

• If you’re reading to them, try and do voices for each of the characters in the story. They will make the entire plot easier to follow, but it’s also something fun for your child.
• If you’re going over a book with plenty of pictures, talk about what’s in them. Children’s books are illustrated for a reason, so don’t just skimp through the pages ignoring the illustrations. You can first ask your child what he or she thinks is happening in the image.
• Make sure nothing interrupts story time. If this is the quality time you like to spend with your child, turn off electronics and leave the phone in another room or put it on silent. Make the child feel like this is their time and their time alone.
• As your child grows older, you can let them choose what story they want next. This will make them feel important as you are actively engaging them in the decision-making process. Plus, they will show more interest in the story if it’s one they get to choose themselves.

Bottom Line 

As you can see, bedtime stories are a wonderful tool from so many different points of view. They don’t just provide quality time between parents and their children, but they also help stimulate the child on a variety of levels. From soothing to rich in life lessons, bedtime stories are a great way to get your kid’s gears running just the right amount of time to get them in that sleepy mood at the end of the day.