Bedtime Reading Enhances Kids Memory

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Listening to grandma's tales at bedtime can stimulate young chilren's development and give them a head start when they reach school, a new study has found.

According to the research, apart from helping their reading, sharing a bedtime story with a child promotes their motor skills, through learning to turn the pages, and their memory.

It also improves their emotional and social development, the study, published in the journal Archives of Disease in Childhood, added.

"You can imagine if someone technologically came up with a widget that would stimulate all aspects of a two-year-old's development, everyone would want to buy it," said Professor Barry Zuckerman, of the department of paediatrics at Boston University school of medicine, who led the study.

Studies show that children who are read to from an earlier age have better language development and tend to have better language scores later in life.

Getting children to grip pages with their thumb and forefinger improves their motor skills, the research said.

"Most important, though, is that reading aloud is a period of shared attention and emotion between parent and child. This reinforces reading as a pleasurable activity," Prof Zuckerman told the Guardian.

"Children ultimately learn to love books because they are sharing it with someone they love," he said.