Why you should read your children bedtime stories

As far as I can remember, I've always been "the creative one", for better or for worse. Being the creative one meant I would always come up with fun and quirky ideas, concepts, designs. It was very useful during art class. It also meant that I always found hidden meanings in things, which would make people laugh. Of course, some of my ideas were a little too eccentric or even tacky, and some people thought I was weird. Not everyone liked it.

I don't think people are born creative: they are raised that way. Like most children from the late 1990s and early 2000s, I spent a lot of time watching TV. A lot of people believe this period was the golden age of weird, but awesome TV shows, on channels such as Cartoon Network and Nickelodeon. Did some of my creativity come from watching these shows? Definitely yes. They were a big influence on my childhood. If you don't believe me, just look at my profile picture.

However, watching these shows wasn't the only thing I did. Every single evening, until I knew how to read, my father would read me a bedtime story. These stories were usually fairytales. He didn't only read them: he acted out the characters, too. He would use different voices, different intonations too. He was very dramatic. Because of this, the stories he read stuck with me. They all felt different, new, and made just for me. The fact that he read to me right before I went to sleep was important too. After hearing a bedtime story, I had vivid dreams. The day was over, but the story wasn't.

As soon as I learned how to write, I started putting these dreams on paper. Now, I could read bedtime stories for myself. My characters lived in castles and fought evil witches and demons. They drove sports cars or rode on a dinosaur's back, they used guns and rapiers, they went to the beach and to the mountains. It was wacky and amazing.

None of these things would make a good novel, but why should they? It was my personal theater, where each story was unique, colorful and full of twists. As an adult, I still get these kinds of dreams from time to time. I'm glad I do. They never fail to cheer me up during hard times, or to brighten a boring day.

Parents, make sure to expose your children to all kinds of different stories. Fun ones, sad ones, fairytales and science-fiction, stories from all around the world. They will make the world a more creative place.