Every parent knows a good bedtime routine is key to settling children at night.
While many parents agree a key ingredient to that routine is a bedtime story, there seems to be some dispute about how long mums and dads should read to their little ones at night.
One mum has asked the question after finding herself reading for over an hour to her children every night and it was keeping them up too late.
Posting on the Family Lockdown Tips and Ideas Facebook page, she said: "How long do you read to your children each night?
"Now my children are both old enough to want to listen to chapter books (and currently each choose their own book for me to read from but listen to each other's book too), I seem to read for over an hour every night.
"I enjoy sharing books with them, but need to sort out their bedtime routine better as they are falling asleep quite late every night and getting tired.
"What do other families do? Do you read for a set amount of time and then stop, even if it's not the end of a chapter?"
One mum said half an hour was her usual cut-off point.
She said: "Depends how much time we’ve got but usually 1-3 chapters. Probably about half an hour."
Another said: "My daughter (7) picks a story and reads to me in bed. Sometimes she’ll ask me to read. But we do a max of 15 mins a night (she also reads morning and score dinner)"
"I do one or two short stories for each child x probably ten mins each."
"I read one or two chapters of one book for both of them together. Then they can read their own books by themselves in bed for a bit with an earliest lights out for the younger of the two (which he ignores)."
But some parents said they just didnt have time for long bedtime stories and preferred to rely on audio books to do the job for them.
One said: "I don’t get the time for anything more than a short story tbh... she then goes to sleep with an audio book each night (4 years old).
"When my boys were younger I would read a couple of chapters with them both together as they shared a room."
Others said their children read their own bedtime stories.
"We've slowly phased out us reading to them and they now get 30 minutes to read by themselves in bed before lights go down. They are 7 and 9," said one.
Others were just amazed that bedtime stories were still a thing.
One woman said: "It's so amazing to see so many of us still read out loud. It has such amazing benefits. Even for older kids the mental health and connection benefits of it are awesome for the kid and parent."
While other parents got their older kids to read to the younger ones: "My 7yo reads to my 4yo. It’s pure bliss as we can FINALLY go and sit down without waiting for them to drop off," said one.
