The bar chart compares bedtime routines of three age categories of children. Overall, reading is the most common activity that children of all age groups do before going to bed, while watching TV and eating are the least common ones. It is also clear that as children get older, they brush their teeth increasingly more frequently. In contrast, having a bath and eating decrease in frequency as children get older.
Reading is the activity that children from all age groups engage in before bedtime more than any other activities presented in the chart. In particular, 70% of 4-5 year-old children are exposed to reading before sleep, compared with 65% of 1-3 year-olds and just under 60% of 6-8 year-olds.
Conversely, watching TV and eating before bedtime are the least common activities for all age groups. When it comes to watching TV, 20% of those aged 4-5 do this activity before sleeping, and the figure for the other two age groups are below 20%. Eating as a part of bedtime routine is more common with the youngest age category at 20%, which is twice as much as the age group 4-5. With 6-8 years old children, this activity is even less frequent at about 8%, meaning the freqeuncy of eating before bedtime decreases as children get older.
Having a bath also seems to decrease from the youngest age group to the oldest at a similar rate. Specifically, while 40% of 1-3 years old children have a bath before going to sleep, this figure drops to a third with the age group 6-8. In contrast, brushing their teeth as a regular habit before bedtime increases in frequency as children grow. 30% of 1-3 year-olds wash their teeth as a part of their bedtime routine, compared to around a half of 6-8 year-olds.