Reading bedtime stories to your children will help you bond with your kids. Snuggle up with one of your children and imagine all the pressures of the day floating away. Add a good story to the mix and those pressures more than float away - they are carried away in an ocean of imagination.
That time you spend together, that closeness, is good for your children too. While you read a story, you sit close together. You laugh together at the funny and silly parts. You feel compassion together at the sad parts. All of those shared emotions promote bonding, the closeness that parents and children feel for one another.
Children love stories. Stories open their eyes to all the wonders of the world - their own world and the whole wide world that exists beyond what they know. Reading to them or with them shows your children that you have time for them. While they will listen to anyone telling a story, they prefer to listen to you more than anyone else. And since you can read stories to them that show them the world, you hold the key to the world for your kids.
I read stories to my two children every day. One likes to hear the same story over and over, and the other prefers variety. Fortunately, they do not have the same bedtime. Stories are a big part of our lives together. The stories I read have become part of the fabric of our family and have brought us closer together.
One of the reasons I write stories is to introduce the wider world to my own children. I particularly like to show them the exotic world I experienced when I lived in Africa. They relate to the baby animals who are the main characters of my Savanna Stories series of children's bedtime stories.
At a recent writers' conference I attended, a writer-illustrator talked about one of his children who wanted to hear a new
story every single night. His other two children had favorite stories they wanted repeated. But not this one. For her he created a new story every night - on the fly. That's three hundred and sixty-five unique stories in a year, and 365 opportunities to create joy, to embrace a sense of wonder, and to be close to his child.
Luckily for me, my children delight in words as much as I do. Sometimes they make up their own stories. My older son writes them down to make his own "books" that he illustrates himself. The younger one just loves to tell silly stories to make everyone laugh.
Start bonding with your children by reading them bedtime stories, and watch the delight blossom in their eyes.
That time you spend together, that closeness, is good for your children too. While you read a story, you sit close together. You laugh together at the funny and silly parts. You feel compassion together at the sad parts. All of those shared emotions promote bonding, the closeness that parents and children feel for one another.
Children love stories. Stories open their eyes to all the wonders of the world - their own world and the whole wide world that exists beyond what they know. Reading to them or with them shows your children that you have time for them. While they will listen to anyone telling a story, they prefer to listen to you more than anyone else. And since you can read stories to them that show them the world, you hold the key to the world for your kids.
I read stories to my two children every day. One likes to hear the same story over and over, and the other prefers variety. Fortunately, they do not have the same bedtime. Stories are a big part of our lives together. The stories I read have become part of the fabric of our family and have brought us closer together.
One of the reasons I write stories is to introduce the wider world to my own children. I particularly like to show them the exotic world I experienced when I lived in Africa. They relate to the baby animals who are the main characters of my Savanna Stories series of children's bedtime stories.
At a recent writers' conference I attended, a writer-illustrator talked about one of his children who wanted to hear a new
story every single night. His other two children had favorite stories they wanted repeated. But not this one. For her he created a new story every night - on the fly. That's three hundred and sixty-five unique stories in a year, and 365 opportunities to create joy, to embrace a sense of wonder, and to be close to his child.
Luckily for me, my children delight in words as much as I do. Sometimes they make up their own stories. My older son writes them down to make his own "books" that he illustrates himself. The younger one just loves to tell silly stories to make everyone laugh.
Start bonding with your children by reading them bedtime stories, and watch the delight blossom in their eyes.
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