Comments on: Bedtime stories

By: aberdeenquinie

aberdeenquinie — Mon, 26 Feb 2007 10:05:52 +0000

Great post – and some lovely comments too.

If there’s been one single thing I’ve done right as a parent, it’s been reading to my children. Like me, none of them are ever without a book or two on the go.

In my attic there are several boxes of children’s books which I couldn’t bear to pass on when mine outgrew them; it would have been like giving away part of their childhood.
I look forward to the possibility of grandchildren and of enjoying again having a small cuddly person on my knee while we read together.

The nearest thing I get to being read aloud to these days is Radio 4 – and jolly good it is too, though without that possibilty of interaction that AB spoke about.

By: tammy vitale

tammy vitale — Sun, 25 Feb 2007 02:27:01 +0000

My Mom read to me when I was little and then for always and ever I saw her reading at the kitchen table – she was a slow reader. I used to talk to her just to make her lose her place and have to go back. I read to my father – the editorials in the daily paper. Had no idea what I was reading but I remember it fondly. He was a fast reader but patient with me and all those words. I read a lot – always have. Devour books. Have even given the habit to Husband who hardly read anything, but always has a bedtime book now (for when he wakes and can’t sleep). Grandson LOVES books. It skipped over my kids. Iread to the first one who read to the 2nd one since at that time my life/marriage was falling apart. This is a GREAT post.

By: healingmagichands

healingmagichands — Sat, 24 Feb 2007 21:02:29 +0000

Yes, reading aloud is something that can and should continue. I share the sorts of memories Aphra has related. Since our parents refused to join in the tv mania, the family history contains many hours of reading to each other, passing a book around the group, while the listeners were knitting, or drawing, or just kicking back allowing the story to take us away.

Later on in my life, my first husband and I chose to build a house with no electricity, and we spent many of the long alaskan winter nights reading to each other. We read through several of Victor Hugo’s books, amazing stuff. Especially “The Toilers of the Sea” and “The Man Who Laughed” I don’t suppose I would have experienced those books if it hadn’t been for that habit.

And now, Charlotte, you don’t have to be sad about the end of the reading. Read, read, read to each other. Let your daughter read to you.

By: Reed

Reed — Fri, 23 Feb 2007 19:05:35 +0000

S and I read to each other in the evenings – a practice I adopted after reading George Eliot’s journals, and finding that she and her partner G.H. Lewes used to read to each other all the time.

Well, that and the fact a Man Who Will Remain Nameless had broken the telly.

I am very envious of all the reading aloud you got through, it’s lovely, so moving. I love the reading aloud thing so much, and am a little wistful that my parents didn’t really bother after I learnt to read by myself. On the other hand, on the rare holidays I spent with my Dad, he used to tell us stories he’d made up himself, great long epics, in which my little sister and I made bestest friends with the King of the Eagles, and went on adventures with him. I remember the first one, when I was about four, and we had to be rescued form a jaffa-cake-stealing tiger in the Indian Jungle. I remember the last one, when I was ten, in which a painting of the Last Judgement came to life and devils invaded the cathedral (it was BRILLIANT).

Oh, damn, I’m all of a wistful now. *sniff*.

By: charlotteotter

charlotteotter — Fri, 23 Feb 2007 06:44:45 +0000

What a lovely post. Part of me has been mourning the fact that I might stop reading to my oldest as she is now reading in German and soon will be reading in English too – of course that’s not the case. I can keep on reading to her, for as long as we both enjoy it.

I like what being read to has given you, and I agree, it’s a wonderful antidote to all the electronic input we get, as well as a sign that someone loves you enough to give you their time.

By: archiearchive

archiearchive — Fri, 23 Feb 2007 02:26:08 +0000

Family traditions cross generations. I am envious of your reading tradition, yet my family also had a tradition, not of reading to each other but of discussing what we read. Whether it was Agatha Christie, Dickens or Georgette Heyer, Pollyanna, the Secret Seven or Biggles we shared our books, my mother and I, and we talked about them. Just as she had talked books with her headmaster father.