Do parents still read their children bedtime stories?
Or do they just yell "shut that TV/computer/game off and git to bed!" When I was a child was quite traditional for a parent to read bedtime stories -there was no TV yet until I was in my early teens.
We were in a remote enough farming community that there was no electricity till early 50's. A radio powered by a multi cell battery that weighed about 20 pounds.
I remember as early as 1954. I was 4 and my memory doesn't go back farther than that. We had a TV, black and white. I had dozens of books for kids. My mom probably read to me, but I remember learning to read very early and just read them myself.
I remember Peter Pan on tv with Mary Martin doing the live play. I was enchanted.
I don't know if parents today read bedtime stories to their young children. I see so many children with electronic devices in their tiny hands, even as young as infants, that I doubt a generation that was brought up on them has much patience or use for the one-on-one interaction of conversation. When people would rather send a text than talk, it's unlikely they'd sit and turn pages to enthrall a young mind. ~
I hope so. I loved bedtime stories. These days with 2-year-olds addicted to iPads, I can't imagine many of them are interested in books. However, working at the public library did give me some hope. A lot of kids would be so excited to come in and look at books and make their parents check out a big stack of them. They seemed to have no problem following the "no electronic devices" rule.
We read to our children, but my son learned to read when he was three and my daughter at five. I don't know if anyone read to me, but I know I was reading at an eighth grade level in the first grade. but I don't know how that happened. Maybe my sister taught me.
My son and his wife have read to our grandson since he was a baby. We read to him when he's at our house ... he really wants us to. I hope young couples read to their kids ... we can't stop doing that .. it benefits the kids for so many reasons. Plus, it encourages them to want to read on their own.
My parents always used X-Files to get us to go to bed because it was so scary. They'd just be like "Oh hey! X-Files comes on soon! Wanna watch it with us, kids?" and we'd all scurry off to our rooms.
I did and my daughter does now. We are a reading family. I can't speak for others, but based on children books sales, I would say many parents still do.
WM BARR . =ABSOLUTE TRASH 