Forum Topic: Dads as storytellers

Topic started by: Helen Watts, Literacy Time Editor at 16 April 2008 - 15:04

So Dads are less likely to read a bedtime story to their children than mums according to a survey by the National Year of Reading. Do you agree?

Posted by: Angus at 17 April 2008 - 12:50

Great. Another report which makes me feel even more stressed than I do already. I would love to have more time to read to my children or to hear them read – but by the time I get home from work it’s often too late. And our weekends are so full of all the other things I am trying to do with my kids to give them a happy, healthy start to life and get them away from the PC – swimming, music clubs, football matches etc. Does it really make me a bad father if I don’t squeeze in reading many books as well? I think not.

Posted by: Bun at 18 April 2008 - 08:21

My father read to me all the time. It was our ‘quality time’. He spent hours reading poetry and stories. Our favourite book was Wind in the Willows and when my father became ill, I read it to him. Perhaps its just the case that parents in general don’t read bedtime stories to their children anymore, not just fathers.

Posted by: Reader from France at 21 April 2008 - 13:32

I read to my daughter every night, one short story in English and then another one in French. Her nanny is Russian and she reads to her in Russian three times a week, so what will this do for her reading skills in the future, I wonder? She is addicted to books, we have hundreds of them and considering she is only 16 months, her vocabulary is enormous – for many things she can say the word in all three languages (‘key’ for example, or ‘sleep’). Oh, and I am a Dad, by the way!