Although I have no memory of my parents reading bedtime stories to me, I do remember my father talking about how his own mother would sit on the landing outside his and his siblings' bedrooms and read to them. I read to my kids, and my husband used to read to me at bedtime, until we discovered that being read to makes me fall asleep so fast that he'd end up reading to an unconscious wife for 20 minutes or so, causing much confusion when he took up the story again the next evening. And of course we read books to our own kids when they were small. We are very much a family of readers, library users, and book collectors.
A few years back I discovered quite by accident that playing an audio book in the car was not only entertaining for me but also appeared to greatly reduce my son's anxieties when travelling by car to an unfamiliar place or for a non-routine purpose. Listening to a book doesn't put him to sleep, but it does pretty much eliminate his anxiety-driven chatter and frequent requests for reassurance about our trip. As a bonus, when you return an audio book you checked out on one of the library apps, the app keeps track of where you left off, which is handy if you have to return it before you're done.
For shared listening I tend to check out classic books that we are already familiar with, like A Wrinkle in Time or The Hobbit, to name two of the more successful audio adaptations we've listened to. It really is astonishing how peaceful and calm car travel becomes when accompanied by well-written and well-read stories. It appears that the attention my son has to devote to listening to the story reduces the amount of attention he has left over to devote to whatever he is worried about. I recommend listening to a selection from the book before committing to it, though, since some voices seems more suited to the content than others, but otherwise this is another example of one of the great riches available to us (for free!).
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