My wife read and recorded the whole Harry Potter series for our eldest, now the second gets to either hear Mom read live, or listen to a recorded chapter everynight before bed.

I've heard you should always read to your kids regardless of their age. They'll only ever read at their level, so even reading a poem or newspaper article or scientific journal to them when they're older increases their reading level.

wouldn't it be better to spend time with them and actually read it to them, rather than sending them to bed with a device to playback a pre-recording?

> now the second gets to either hear Mom read live, or listen to a recorded chapter everynight before bed.

I assume mom reads live frequently, but if she can't for whatever reason the kid can still get his/her chapter at bedtime.

So we play it communally on a big Bluetooth speaker.

I read to my daughters all the time, but eventually one of them decided she disliked it (didn't like the pace) and the other is still preferring to listen to audio books while in college. It's an individual thing.

Also I think a lot of parents don't look forward to reading aloud.

I still read to my daughter who just turned 12 before bed for 30 minutes or so.

She can quite easily read the books I read to her, but still wants me to read.

Yeah this sounds very weird to me. In my family by the time we were able to read without effort we started taking turns reading to each other.

It is an aberration.