Let Your Kid Pick the Book — Eight Things for Bedtime Reading

Let them choose tonight’s book

Most of the fight isn’t about reading. It’s about who decides. Hand that part over and the whole thing changes shape — they’re not being read at, they’re getting something they asked for.

Minimum that counts: Ask one question before you start: “Which one?” Whatever they hand you is the book. No vetoing it for being too long, too short, or the one you read last night. That on its own makes the choice a real one. It won’t make the choosing quick — a whole shelf is a lot to decide between at the end of the day.

Full version (if you have capacity): If the whole shelf is too big a choice, hold up two and let them point. Keep three or four books within their reach where bedtime actually happens, so the picking takes ten seconds instead of five minutes.

Read the one you’re sick of

Reading the same book forty times is a feature of this, not a problem with it. Small kids re-read the way adults re-play a song they like — they’re not after new information, they’re after the pleasure of knowing what comes next. Nearly every parent quietly believes they’re failing at this part. They aren’t.

Minimum that counts: When they pick the one you’ve read all week, read it. Don’t offer an alternative and don’t negotiate a swap for something new. This does nothing for your own boredom, and it isn’t going to. What it does is leave the end of their day as the one part of it they can predict.

Full version (if you have capacity): Use the fact that they know it. Pause just before the line they can finish, and let them finish it. The fortieth reading is the one where they get to be the expert.

Hand them one job in the book

Choosing the book is one thing. Having a job during the reading is another. A kid with a job in it stops being an audience.

Minimum that counts: Give them one small job: turning the pages, finding the dog on every page, or saying the line that repeats. One job is plenty, and the same job every time is fine. That much is usually enough to keep them in the book rather than beside it — though it won’t hold a kid who’s already past it, and on those nights the job is the first thing to let go of.

Full version (if you have capacity): Let them set the route — which page to start on, which bit to go back to, which picture to sit on for a while. Out of order is not a wrong way to read a picture book. Then their say in it isn’t just the one decision at the start — it runs the whole way through the book.

Let them tell you the story

Long before kids can read, they read by telling you what’s happening in the pictures, reciting a book they know by heart, or inventing something with no relation to the words on the page. That is reading, as far as the two of you are concerned, and it’s the part where they’re in charge.

Minimum that counts: Hand them the book and ask them to tell you this one. Listen to whatever comes out. Don’t correct a word of it, and don’t turn it into finding letters or sounding things out. Nothing here is teaching them to read, and doing it often won’t turn it into that. What they get is a few minutes as the person in the room who knows the story.

Full version (if you have capacity): Ask the one question that keeps them going — “and then what happened?” — and let them take it anywhere, including nowhere near the actual story. The further they’re allowed to wander from the page, the longer they’ll usually keep going. If reading out loud is the hard part for you, this is also the easiest night in the week; make it a regular one.

Read two pages, badly, and stop

When this stops, it’s almost never because it stopped mattering. It stops because on an ordinary tired evening the full version feels like a performance you haven’t got in you. So don’t aim for the full version. Short, flat and fast is not a lesser version of this — it’s the version that keeps it alive.

Minimum that counts: Two pages. One counts. The same page as last night counts. And it doesn’t have to be you reading the words: telling the story from the pictures in your own words, reading in whichever language comes easiest to you, or putting the audio on while you turn the pages and talk about them. All of those count exactly the same, because what matters is that you’re in it with them and it’s the book they chose. Audio playing while they listen on their own is a different thing — that’s a recording keeping them company, not this.

Full version (if you have capacity): On a night with something left in the tank, read to the end of the story, voices and all. What that adds is the ending — the part two pages can’t give them — and the voices, which they’ll ask you to do again.

Read anyway while they move

A kid who won’t sit still for a book usually isn’t refusing the book. Plenty of small children take a story in while they’re busy doing something else, and the sitting still is a thing we added. Some of it will go past them. That’s a better night than the book turning into an argument about sitting down.

Minimum that counts: Start reading out loud whether or not they’ve settled. Let them wander, climb, lie upside down or keep a toy going. You don’t need them sitting, or even looking at you, for this to count. You’ll have less of their attention than you would on a quiet night, and the book will still have happened.

Full version (if you have capacity): Keep going to the end while they potter, and hold the page up now and then so they can see the picture from wherever they’ve got to. Holding the page up is the part that keeps them in it — without that you’re reading out loud in the same room, which isn’t quite the same thing. If they drift off entirely, close the book without comment and offer it again another night — chasing them with it is how it turns into a chore.

Stop one page early on purpose

An unfinished page gives them something to come back for. A kid who knows there’s one page left will often ask for the book the next night.

Minimum that counts: Once, stop a page early and say what’s coming: “Tomorrow we find out what’s in the box.” Then close it. If they really want the last page, give it to them — naming the next book works just as well. One early stop doesn’t build anything on its own. What it gives you is an easy start tomorrow, with them doing the asking.

Full version (if you have capacity): Bring the stopping place up at some point the next day — “I kept thinking about that box.” It gives the book a thread that runs through the day instead of living only in the last ten minutes of it.

Let a missed night be nothing

There will be nights with no book in them — a late night, home long after you meant to be, someone asleep in the car on a dark evening. Those nights don’t break anything. Treating a missed night as one you have to make up is what breaks it.

Minimum that counts: When it doesn’t happen, don’t make it up tomorrow and don’t mention it. Pick it up the next night as though nothing happened — because nothing did.

Full version (if you have capacity): Let the book exist for thirty seconds instead: one line of it in the car, or “we’ll read the dinosaur one next time” as you turn the light off. That’s enough to keep it in the week.