A bedtime story is a traditional form of storytelling

Storytelling

Storytelling is the conveying of events in words, images and sounds, often by improvisation or embellishment. Stories or narratives have been shared in every culture as a means of entertainment, education, cultural preservation and in order to instill moral values...

, where a story

Narrative

A narrative is a constructive format that describes a sequence of non-fictional or fictional events. The word derives from the Latin verb narrare, "to recount", and is related to the adjective gnarus, "knowing" or "skilled"...

 is told to a child

Child

Biologically, a child is generally a human between the stages of birth and puberty. Some vernacular definitions of a child include the fetus, as being an unborn child. The legal definition of "child" generally refers to a minor, otherwise known as a person younger than the age of majority...

 at bedtime

Bedtime

Bedtime, in Western parenting tradition, involves to a greater or lesser extent, rituals made to help children feel more secure, and become accustomed toward a comparatively more rigid sleep schedule than they would otherwise establish....

 to prepare them for sleep

Sleep

Sleep is a naturally recurring state characterized by reduced or absent consciousness, relatively suspended sensory activity, and inactivity of nearly all voluntary muscles. It is distinguished from quiet wakefulness by a decreased ability to react to stimuli, and is more easily reversible than...

.

Bedtime stories have many advantages, for parents/adults and children alike. The fixed routine of a bedtime story before sleeping has a relaxing effect, and the soothing voice of a person telling a story makes the child fall asleep more easily. The emotional aspect creates a bond between the storyteller and the listener, often a parent and child.

Bedtime stories can be read from a book, or rather, fictional stories made up by the storyteller. The stories are mostly rather short, between one and five minutes, and have a happy ending. A different form of bedtime reading is using longer stories, but dividing them up, thus creating cliffhanger

Cliffhanger

A cliffhanger or cliffhanger ending is a plot device in fiction which features a main character in a precarious or difficult dilemma, or confronted with a shocking revelation at the end of an episode of serialized fiction...

s. Children will look forward to their bedtime story, and a fixed routine is installed.