Chesnokova O.B. “Tell me, mother, bedtime story.” Age-psychological approach to the study of developmental effect of evening reading in preschool age

Keywords: family reading children’s narratives reading before bed socio-emotional psychological comfort

Chesnokova O.B. “Tell me, mother, bedtime story.” Age-psychological approach to the study of developmental effect of evening reading in preschool age // Preschool Education Today. 2013, Issue 5 - p. 34–44.

This work is licensed under a Сreative Commons Atribiution - NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0)

2013, 5

Olga B. Chesnokova
PhD in Psychology, Associate Professor of Department of Developmental Psychology of Lomonosov Moscow State University (Moscow, Russia)

Abstract

Traditionally family reading had educational and training functions. Recently, however, interest in this type of activity has reduced. The paper analyzes the developmental effect of relatively little-known form of family reading – reading at bedtime, and the response of the child to different types and forms of family reading and telling stories before going to sleep in early and middle preschool age. The study was conducted at three kindergartens in Moscow. The study results show that in communicating with a child at bedtime parents should flexibly use different strategies for establishing socio-emotional psychological comfort depending on the experienced events of the day by the child and the objectives of cooperation. The main functions of bedtime reading are self-awareness, conflict resolution, representation and verbalization of experience, the development of attachment, mastering norms and values.