The time comes for the story at night and your child asks you to read the same book over and over again. And you think "Really, the same story again?" You may think it is better to vary, so that you know new stories and enrich the reading experience, but it is proven that children's insistence on asking you to read the same story over and over again is much more beneficial to them than you think. We tell you what it means for them to tell or read 300 times the same story.
Routine safety
As with sleeping routines when they are young, daily routines provide safety for children. Being predictable, and repeating daily routines become habits, and the habit of reading is one of the best gifts you can give your children.
The child knows that every night the ritual will be the same, and if the same story is repeated, this gives a feeling of control and security with which you feel comfortable.
In Babies and moreMore than 100 short stories to tell children at bedtimeThere are no shocks or surprises. Know the story, and know what will happen next, gives them peace of mind. Of course, you are a key piece in the routine of each night's story (or the time of day you read).
In addition to everything they learn, the routine of reading a story helps to establish an emotional connection with the children, an experience that emotionally nurtures the child.Different levels of understanding
Another advantage of repeating the same story over and over is that far from being boring for them, children need that repetition to enrich the experience.
According to a study conducted in the 1990s on the practice of storytelling in children of child age, researchers Phillips and Naughton discovered that there are different phases of assimilation of history.
In Babies and more, we read stories aloud to our children! Doing so has important benefits for its developmentIn a first phase, children focus on understanding the story, following the narrative thread; in a second phase, they focus on the nuances bringing attention to details that they did not repair before; and a third phase is the one that motivates the communication, commenting on the story, contributing its opinion, predicting, and very important, strengthening the acquisition of new vocabulary.
Accelerate vocabulary acquisition
And one of the most significant benefits of reading the same stories dozens of times is that the repetition of the stories helps children accelerate vocabulary acquisition. This has been proven by scientists from the British University of Sussex, who separated three-year-old children into two groups, to whom they read stories that introduced two words unknown to them.
One of the groups was told three different stories, while the other was always told the same. The children had only been told a story they remembered the new words better that the children who had been told three different stories
"What this research suggests is that the important thing is not the number of books but the repetition of each one of them, because it is what promotes greater learning, "the authors point out in the conclusions of the work.
"The first time may be only the understanding of the story, the second the perception of the details and the description, and so on in a progressive way," the text adds, while "if the new word is introduced in a variety of contexts, most likely, children will not be able to concentrate so much on the new word. "
So you already know. If tonight your child asks you to read the same story over and over again, besides being an experience that everyone will enjoy, it is the best thing you can do to encourage more learning.
In Babies and more | Six things you should do when you read to your children, Why we shouldn't force children to read before age six: their brain is not ready
