Fathers’ Story Week Monday, June 13, 2011 - 11:17

Supportive home environments and the engagement of parents and carers in their child's development from the earliest days are key to children's language, literacy and social development. This week is Fathers' Story Week highlighting the significant role that dads and male carers need to and increasingly do play in children's learning.

Research shows that children who hear stories from birth, who live in book-rich environments and who develop their language skills through interaction, are best placed to succeed at school and in life.

As women are still, predominantly, the main carer it is important that men actively carve out spaces to share stories and books, making time to give their unique spin, style and substance to events and interactions and develop a unique relationship with their kids. It is vital that professionals enable this to happen.

Storybook Dads helps dads who are serving prison sentences record bedtime stories that are then put on CD and played for some of the 160,000 children who have a parent in prison. Imagine the impact if more prisons ran a similar scheme. And it does work for other absent dads. Representatives of the Army met the Storybook Dads project at an Adult Learners' Week ceremony a few years ago and now run Storybook Soldiers, keeping serving dads in touch with their children when they are deployed.

But what is needed are more initiatives that not only connect dads and carers with children but help dads to be more confident in their reading. I met a builder in London a few years ago who used to get cross with his kids when they asked for his help with reading, ‘Go ask your mother!' he would say. Of course he was cross with himself and now, thanks to the Quick Reads he's read as part of his adult literacy classes, he loves reading and loves helping his kids with their homework. He told me that after he had finished his first book, it was the first time in his life he had ‘felt like a proper man'.

But even if men are not confident readers, they can still tell stories. Stories form important bonds, develop the imagination and allow children to encounter and discover new language patterns not found in books. They put children in touch with their family and with stories from the past. We know from research that a pre-school child's storytelling ability is predictive of their ability in maths two years later.

The other day I was watching my son tell a story to his children, it was one they had heard many times before but insist on hearing it over and over again like a favourite song. It is a story about when he was young and fell off a slide and hurt his face. The kids are captivated, watching and wondering about what their daddy looked like when he was little like them, how much it hurt him and did he cry.

Sharing books, going to the library and watching TV together are not only vital to children's development of literacy skills, but also vital to developing a close bond. But storytelling can happen anywhere, anytime and needs absolutely no props. We have all grown up with favourite stories, with tales that keep our culture and history alive. Hopefully this week will give more men the confidence to share their experiences and adventures with the most captivated audience there is - and who, one day, will be expert story-tellers themselves, sharing your stories with their children.