Parenting | Child Development | Family & Education
For generations, parents have read bedtime stories to help their children relax, fall asleep, and develop a love of books.
But what if those few quiet minutes together could do something even more meaningful?
What if reading a story every evening could help children better understand other people’s feelings, recognize emotions, and become more compassionate?
A study reported in 2026 suggests that shared reading may offer benefits beyond vocabulary and literacy.
Researchers examined 38 families with children between the ages of six and eight, exploring whether reading together over a two-week period could influence children’s empathy.
The reported findings were encouraging: children showed improvements in empathy after participating in nightly reading sessions.
And perhaps the most interesting observation was that the benefits were reported whether parents stopped to discuss the story or simply read it aloud.
For busy parents who sometimes worry they’re not doing enough, the findings raise an intriguing possibility.
A simple bedtime routine may provide meaningful opportunities for emotional learning without requiring elaborate activities or special teaching methods.
However, the study was small, and its findings should be interpreted cautiously. Improvements observed over two weeks do not necessarily prove that reading alone caused them or that the effects will last.
Why Empathy Matters During Childhood
Empathy is the ability to recognize and understand what another person may be feeling.
It helps children form friendships, respond to someone who is upset, and consider how their actions affect others.
For example, imagine a child notices a classmate sitting alone during recess.
A child developing empathy may begin to wonder whether that classmate feels lonely or excluded.
That awareness can encourage supportive behavior, such as inviting the classmate to join a game.
Empathy also plays a role in resolving disagreements.
When children begin to understand that other people have different feelings and perspectives, they may become better equipped to navigate conflicts.
These skills develop gradually through a combination of relationships, experiences, emotional development, and learning opportunities.
Parents, teachers, siblings, and friends all contribute to that process.
And stories may provide another valuable way to explore emotions.
What the 2026 Study Reported
The study described in the original report involved 38 families with children aged six to eight.
Over approximately two weeks, parents participated in nightly reading activities with their children.
The researchers were interested in whether different approaches to reading might influence empathy.
One approach involved parents reading stories aloud without interrupting the narrative to ask questions.
Another involved interactive reading, in which parents paused to engage children in discussion about the story.
These discussions could encourage children to think about what characters were experiencing.
According to the reported findings, children in both reading conditions showed improvements in empathy.
This is particularly interesting because it suggests that parents may not need to transform bedtime reading into a formal lesson for children to benefit.
Simply hearing a story and following its characters may offer opportunities to consider other people’s experiences.
Still, a crucial distinction matters: an improvement measured during a short study does not establish that every child will become more empathetic after 14 nights of reading.
The results are promising, but larger studies with longer follow-up periods are needed to understand how reliably the effects occur.
Why Stories May Help Children Understand Feelings
Books introduce children to situations they may never have experienced personally.
A story might follow a character who feels frightened on the first day of school.
Another might describe a child who has lost something important.
A third could explore the feelings of someone who has been excluded from a group.
As children listen, they encounter different emotional situations from the safety of a familiar environment.
They can observe how characters react to disappointment, excitement, sadness, or uncertainty.
And they can begin connecting those experiences to situations in their own lives.
For instance, a child who hears a story about someone being left out may remember a similar moment at school.
That connection can become the beginning of a deeper understanding of other people’s perspectives.
Psychologists sometimes describe this ability as perspective-taking.
It involves recognizing that another person may have thoughts, beliefs, or feelings different from one’s own.
Stories can provide natural opportunities to practice this skill.
The Surprising Finding: Asking Questions Wasn’t Necessary for Empathy Gains
Researchers initially expected that children whose parents stopped to ask reflective questions would develop stronger empathy than those who simply listened.
But the results challenged that expectation.
Both groups improved significantly in cognitive empathy and overall empathy scores.
Cognitive empathy refers to understanding what another person might be thinking or experiencing.
Emotional empathy, by contrast, involves sharing or responding emotionally to another person’s feelings.
The researchers did not find a statistically significant improvement in emotional empathy during the two-week study.
This distinction matters because the findings do not mean that every aspect of empathy improved equally.
Instead, the clearest gains involved children’s reported ability to understand another person’s perspective.
PLOS One
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An Unexpected Bonus: Children Also Became More Creative
Empathy wasn’t the only ability the researchers examined.
They also measured creativity.
Children were asked to imagine different uses for everyday objects, a common method for assessing creative thinking.
For example, rather than identifying only an object’s normal purpose, children might suggest unusual ways it could be used.
After two weeks, both reading groups improved in creative fluency and originality.
But here the researchers discovered an important difference.
Children whose parents paused to ask reflective questions generated significantly more creative ideas than children whose parents read straight through.
This suggests that discussing a character’s feelings or possible decisions may encourage flexible thinking.
When a child considers several possible responses to a problem, they are practicing imagining alternatives.
That skill can be valuable not only for understanding fictional characters but also for solving everyday problems.
PLOS One
The Seven Books Used in the Study
The research team selected seven illustrated children’s books containing situations involving social conflict or emotional challenges.
Among them were Library Lion, Nugget and Fang, The Tooth Fairy Wars, and Cub’s Big World.
The families read each book twice during the 14-day period.
Some stories explored friendship, while others involved separation, disappointment, or disagreements.
The books were not chosen because they used a special psychological teaching method.
They were ordinary children’s stories that provided opportunities to think about emotions and relationships.
That makes the findings especially interesting for families.
Parents may already have suitable books at home.
Phys.org
How Parents Can Try This at Home
Parents who want to encourage shared reading can begin with a manageable routine.
A practical approach is to choose an age-appropriate story, find a comfortable place, and read together regularly.
For children who enjoy discussing stories, parents might occasionally ask:
- How do you think that character felt?
- Why do you think they made that decision?
- What might you have done differently?
- How could the characters solve their disagreement?
There is no need to turn every reading session into a lesson.
Some evenings, children may want to discuss the story.
On other evenings, they may prefer to listen quietly.
The study found improvements in measured cognitive empathy in both reading groups, so parents need not feel pressured to interrupt every story.
What matters is finding an enjoyable, sustainable routine that works for the family.
Why Parents Should Keep Reading Even After Children Learn to Read
One of the most interesting questions raised by the research is whether families stop reading aloud too early.
Once children become independent readers, some parents assume bedtime stories are no longer necessary.
But reading independently and listening to a parent read are different experiences.
Independent reading allows children to practice literacy skills and explore books at their own pace.
Shared reading creates opportunities for conversation, attention, and connection.
Children who can read on their own may still enjoy hearing stories.
They may also appreciate books that contain vocabulary or themes slightly beyond their independent reading level.
According to figures discussed by researcher Erin Clabough, 51% of families surveyed in 2024 read aloud to their very young children, compared with 37% of families with children aged six to eight.
Those figures highlight how shared reading becomes less common as children grow older.
Good.is
What the Study Cannot Tell Us
Although the results were encouraging, the research had important limitations.
Only 38 families participated, making it a relatively small study.
The intervention lasted just two weeks, so the researchers could not establish whether the observed improvements would persist for months or years.
And importantly, there was no comparison group of children who did not participate in a nightly reading routine.
This means the researchers could not conclusively determine whether reading itself caused the improvements.
Other factors, including increased parent-child interaction or familiarity with the tests, may have contributed.
The empathy results were also based on questionnaire measures rather than direct observation of children’s behavior in everyday social situations.
The authors acknowledged these limitations and emphasized the need for further research.
PMC
A Small Habit With Meaningful Possibilities
The most encouraging aspect of this research may be how accessible the activity is.
Families don’t necessarily need expensive educational programs or complicated materials to create opportunities for emotional learning.
A library book, a comfortable chair, and a little time together can provide a starting point.
The 2026 study suggests that children who participated in two weeks of nightly reading showed measurable improvements in cognitive empathy and creativity.
It also suggests that simple reading may be worthwhile even without structured questions.
The findings are not proof that bedtime stories will transform a child’s personality in 14 days.
But they provide another reason to preserve a familiar family tradition.
Because the benefits of a bedtime story may extend beyond the words printed on the page.
Sometimes, the most valuable part of the evening isn’t finishing the book. It’s sharing the experience of discovering another person’s world together.
Sources
- PLOS ONE — Keep the Bedtime Story: A Daily Reading Ritual Improves Empathy and Creativity in Children (January 9, 2026)
- PubMed Central — Full Research Paper and Methodology
- The Conversation / Phys.org — Researcher Erin Clabough Explains the Findings (February 2026)
- GOOD — Reading to Young Kids Improves Their Social Skills (February 2026)
Editorial note: The study was published in January 2026 in PLOS ONE. It found improvements in measured cognitive and total empathy, but did not establish a significant improvement in emotional empathy or prove that reading alone caused the changes. Images are illustrative.
Do you still read bedtime stories to your children or grandchildren? What’s the one book they never get tired of hearing? Share it in the comments! ❤️📚
