Ten tips to make bedtime reading fun

Horrid Henry author Francesca Simon says there's no greater pleasure than 20 minutes a day spent reading to your child – so fetch a book and snuggle down

• Francesca Simon

• theguardian.com, Tuesday 17 September 2013 

Getting them hooked ... Mother and daughter reading. Photograph: Frank Baron for the Guardian

All children need and love stories. Yet a recent poll of 2,000 mothers with children aged 0-7 (What? No fathers?!) found that only 64% of respondents said they read their children bedtime stories. Reasons for not reading to their kids included being too stressed or too tired, while nearly half said they couldn't lure their kids away from computer games and TV.

Well, try harder. Reading to your kids is the absolute best time parents and children have together. I say this not only as a writer but as the parent of a now grown-up son. You snuggle up; it's calm and cosy. There is nothing that reduces stress more than 20 minutes of reading together. My husband and I enjoyed it so much we did double shifts: he read to our son in the mornings, and I read in the evenings.
We continued bedtime stories until he was 11, when he literally pushed us out of his room. I'd still be reading to him today – he's 24 – if he'd let me. And it's not because I'm Supermum. It's because reading to him and with him were some of the best times we had together.

Here are my 10 top tips for making reading to your children a joy.

1. Start early

I began looking at board books with Josh when my son was four months old. We both loved Helen Oxenbury's enchanting stories Friends, Dressing and Playing. I would offer him the choice of two, and he would drop the one he didn't want. Peepo, The Baby's Catalogue and Dear Zoo were also big favourites. Babies have opinions, and don't get enough opportunities to make choices. And they adore looking at books.

2. You are not too busy to read to your child

That's like saying you don't have time to feed them. Work late? Too tired? Too much on at night? There's no law that says you can only read to kids at bedtime. Get up a bit earlier and read together in the morning. My husband often worked late and that's what he did.
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