All parents know this problem well. Your little mini-me has just handed you THAT book again. The SAME book you read for thirty minutes straight the day before…and the day before that…and the day before that. Chances are you have the book memorized by this point. You would love to hide the book on the top shelf of the closet for a few months. But you can’t. Because you love your child (sometimes you have to take a deep breath and remind yourself before cracking open THAT book again) and you know reading to them is beneficial in more ways than one.
So you take the book out of their chubby, outstretched hand, settle them in your lap, and start from the beginning. Again.
“Into the garden bumbled a bee…”
“Noisy yellow digger meets someone new…”
“There once was an elephant who liked to smash small cars…”
You read the story. You do the voices, the inflections. You sound chipper and happy that you get to read the book again. You show them the words with your finger. You point out parts of the picture (“Look! See the baby find the mommy?” or “Wow! That’s a lot of fish! Which is your favorite?”) and listen to their rambling answers. You get to the end of the story with a final THE END…only to have your child flip the book back over, point at the cover, and say, “Again!”
This is an example that seems to happen daily in our house. We all love books and have them literally in every room of our house. Bathrooms included.
So even though it makes me crazy, I will always sit down and read THAT book to my child again because it’s the early interaction that’s important, not the book. It’s hearing words said aloud by a person. It’s knowing that your child is loved and important enough for their parent to push away other distractions—like phones or, in my case, my books—to simply enjoy an activity together. Many studies have shown that talking to your children and reading to them increases their language acquisition. By reading to your child twenty minutes a day for a year, you are exposing them to over 1,800,000 words. I’ve been known to have conversations with my non-talking babies, just so they can hear my voice and know that I’m there.
Parents fail at a lot of things. No one is perfect. However, we all can talk to our children. We can all take a little bit of time away from ourselves to invest in our children. Because at the end of the day, that’s love. And if that means sitting on my kitchen floor to read a book while simultaneously trying to make sure dinner doesn’t burn, then so be it.
Need some new reading selections? My boys are currently loving these titles:
The Elephant who Liked to Smash Small Cars by Jean Merrill
Hooray for Fish! by Lucy Cousins
Sharks (Usborne Lift-the-Flap) by Phillip Clarke
Goodnight Moon by Margaret Wise Brown
Nibbles: the Book Monster by Emma Yarlett
The Wizard of Oz series by L. Frank Baum
Night-Night, Forrest Friends by Annie Bach
Llama Llama Nighty Night by Anna Dewdney
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