My dad read me stuff like the lord of the rings and the hitchhikers guide to the galaxy and Sherlock Holmes as bedtime stories when I was a kid and I dunno what sort of effect that had on my development but whatever it did I think Iām making it everyone elseās problem
do parents actually read their kids bedtime stories?
I always thought that was like a cheesy trope in a tv show or smth
Yeah and reading to kids helps them build language skills
My Dad read picture books to us when we were very very young, running the tip of his finger under the words.
We had a "false alarm" when I was two or three, when I had memorized my favorite story and for about fifteen seconds he wondered if I had learned to read, but I was able to continue on when he covered up the text so then he knew it was just memorization. (Which, to be clear, is still pretty good!)
A few weeks later that, I was actually, provably, reading at a picture book level.
I was reading novels on my own, sloooowly, when I was about four. The first proper book that I ever read by myself was The Wizard of Oz.
My Dad didn't stop reading to us, by the way. My sister and I were read a mix of picture books and other works for a while, to accommodate the difference in our ages. So, like, he would read us one of the Just So Stories by Rudyard Kipling, and one of the Grimm's tales out of a Childcraft book, and then we might finish with Goodnight Moon or a Dr Seuss book.
When we were very slightly older than that, he switched to novels. Some were aimed at kids, like The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, the Little House books and The Hobbit. Later ones were not, like The Mote in God's Eye, Moby Dick, Huckleberry Finn, or The Fellowship of the Ring.
(To be clear, we were also reading quite a lot on our own. Like, I was engulfing books at a rate that I can only be wistful about now.)
I am under the impression that this continued until I was in middle school, but there was a gap because I was unutterably bored with Moby Dick, and I absented myself from bedtime reading for a while until they finished it and went back to the good stuff.
I don't know what studies would say about reading to kids, and I don't think most studies would necessarily be able to replicate a neurodivergent family that made bedtime reading A Thing for a dozen plus years. Nor would most parents be able to be so consistent for so long. But I don't believe it was coincidental that in fifth grade I consistently tested as reading at a college level.
