I came across this article which I must definitely share with you guys as I'm very interested to know your thoughts on this. For your convenience, I have copied the excerpts from the article here:
"Fathers should make a special effort to tuck their children in at night, according to research which shows that bedtime stories are better for youngsters when they are read by men.
A study at Harvard University in the US into the effect on infants’ language after a year of hearing stories read by their parents found that girls seemed to benefit particularly from being read to by a male. Elisabeth Duursma, who carried out the research, said: ‘The impact is huge, particularly if dads start reading to kids under the age of two.
'Reading is seen as a female activity and kids seem to be more tuned in when their dad reads to them – it’s special.’ Men and women also approach the task differently, she found. Mothers tended to ask ‘teacher-like’, factual questions, such as ‘How many apples do you see?’ Fathers favoured more abstract questions, which sparked imaginative discussions. ‘That is great for children’s language development because they have to use their brains more. It’s more cognitively challenging.’
Parenting expert Justin Coulson added: ‘When we read to our children we expand their vocabulary. We help them to feel safe and this can have a profound impact on their capacity for learning. 'Research has consistently shown that parents reading to children improves the quality of relationships, academic outcomes and resilience.’"
Firstly, I think we should safely agree that reading to our kiddos is important and beneficial to them. Now, back to this article, from my personal experience of reading news articles instead of bedtime stories to our kiddos (I know, weird but it works and our kiddos love it!), I do combined both approaches as mentioned in the article. Meaning, I asked ‘teacher-like’, factual questions and also abstract questions as well, depending on the articles we read.
For example, just earlier before bedtime tonight, I was reading some articles on the supermoon (blood moon or whatever names they have for it), I was reading slowly and at the same time explaining why this happened, what is eclipse, and then reminding our oldest kiddo on some earlier conversations we had about eclipses to jog his memory a bit and why in an article it shows tons of birds flew past the bright moon.
I guess as parents, be it a mother or a father, we do what we think is appropriate for our kiddos using the best approaches that can get them to listen attentively and yet keep their interests level high. I mean, it might not make sense asking your young toddler how many objects in the book if they have yet learn to count etc.
So I think age appropriate and as parents, you should know your child the best, should not be influenced by articles that says dads are better or moms are better LOL. But then, I do feel that a mother's soothing voice might be a better choice for bedtime story, but that's just my personal thoughts haha..
What do you think?
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