The benefits of the bedtime story

FOR many young children, pre-school is their first introduction to books.

So says Teresa Heeney, CEO of Early Childhood Ireland, who also points to a statistic from an Easons survey— one in five parents in Ireland never read to their children.

For Heeney, parental reading to children ties in with one of the most important roles a parent plays in a child’s life. “The parent relationship is the single most important relationship for a child. It’s within this relationship children seek to understand their world. Reading to them and engaging them in conversation about the books you’re reading provides a wonderful context in which they can begin to understand their world.”