Milk firm helps provide more than just food for kids

NIDO believes bedtime storytelling can help nurture parent-child bonding and develop a kid’s skills, creativity and imagination.

Nourishing your child does not end in providing food, clothing, shelter and education.

More than these, the emotional bond that should exist between a parent and a child is said to also be responsible in shaping and developing a person’s character and behavior throughout his or her lifetime.

Establishing this bond, according to child development expert Dr. Lillian Juadiong, can be as simple as a bedtime storytelling, which should not only serve its more famous purpose of putting kids to sleep.

“(Storytelling) enhances your children’s creativity and widens their imagination… Stories encourage kids into imaginary worlds where the impossible becomes possible, the fun never stops, and the endings are as happy as you can imagine,” Juadiong says in a statement.

Nido Fortified, for one, fervently believes in the importance of storytelling, urging parents to spend such quality time with their children before they go to sleep.

Just last month, Nido held another storytelling session in its Bedtime Story Room booth during the Nestle I Choose Wellness Expo, with Rich Rodriguez and Posh Develos of Alitaptap Storytellers leading the activity. The event was meant to demonstrate the many and varied benefits of engaging parents and children in an interactive storytelling session.

One of these benefits, according to Juadiong, was the development of language, listening abilities, and oral communication skills, as storytelling can enhance a child’s vocabulary with the introduction of new words and sentence structures in a particular language.

“Although the development of listening skills is the obvious goal of storytelling, it is important that the storyteller should engage the listener and encourage him to respond to the story by asking brief story-related questions during or at the end of the storytelling session,” Juadiong explains.

Another advantage of engaging in such an activity is that it provides exposure to new knowledge.

“Children’s books are a great way to introduce new concepts to children. Stories and illustrations go hand in hand in teaching your kids new ideas like a different animal or a certain toy,” she notes.

Citing research, Juadiong says that children’s books are good influencers of a child’s socio-emotional development.

“Children’s tales often have a lesson at the end to teach kids basic manners and proper behavior,” she adds.

Bedtime storytelling also improves problem-solving skills as most children’s stories involve a character looking for a way to solve a problem. Reading such stories will teach your kid how to solve a problem by using the character as an example and following his actions in resolving the problem, she explains.

Thus, when choosing a story, parents should try to pick one that has a problem to which a child can relate to, like a story of a boy searching for his toys, in case he recently complains of a missing toy, or a girl who learned how to use the potty, if she still doesn’t know how to go to the bathroom, Juadiong explains.