Reading a bedtime story with your child is something we can all take for granted. It’s easy to do so when you’ve done six loads of washing, changed four thousand nappies, cooked dinner only for the inclusion of broccoli to be moaned at and reminded the offspring at least seventy eight times to brush their teeth. When you’ve finally got the little ankle-biters in bed you’d be forgiven for putting them to sleep minus a story and the beseeching demands for an encore. However, it’s a luxury being able to take reading a bedtime story for granted, a luxury that the serving parent simply does not have for months at a time. I can’t imagine how much I would crave being able to read to my kids after weeks apart from them, I can’t
imagine how much they’d miss me doing so (despite my almost 100% rate of encore refusal). Little Troopers have just created a free app that allows any British serving member to record bedtime stories for their little ones, I thought it was such a simple, wonderful idea, such a potential help when you’re the stay at home parent that I wanted to share it with you.

Research done on the benefits of reading to children show that it gives them a substantial head start in school whilst improving their emotional and social development. We all know as members of this crazy, whirlwind, of an army life that at times the emotional stability of our children can be one of our biggest concerns, at its peak when our soldier is away. Little Troopers Treasures is an app that means “service personnel never have to miss story time again” an app that adds just a bit more of that stability we fight for. Working with Harper Collins, Little Troopers Treasures enables Mum or Dad to easily make recordings on ipads/ Android devices of themselves reading one of the chosen stories in real time to the turning of said books pages. This file can then be saved (you can save up to five stories at a time) and watched/ listened to as many times as you like.

No app can replace Mummy or Daddy, I know that, you know that, we all know that. What I do know however is that any little thing we can do, as parents, to make the tumultuous period when our soldier is away any better is a good thing. Little Troopers Treasures allows that special pre-bed story time to continue; to reinforce that bond between child and absent parent. Reading a story to your child is a rare period of peaceful, shared attention and emotion, a special time that absent Mummy or Daddy no longer have to miss. I can’t help but feel it’ll help small ones go to sleep happier, ready to begin the chaos and torment you all over again tomorrow; twenty four hours later and the subsequential seventy eight reminders of brushing their teeth at least the encore of a story is at the touch of a button.