Reading to Your Child

When my son was just a few weeks old I started to read to him. Some of my friends thought I was crazy, but I felt that it was important. Not because I am a teacher or that I love to read, but because a baby is never too young to start learning (and hey what else are you supposed to do with a newborn?) I wanted to have a hand in my child’s learning, instead of just popping him in front of a TV with one of those DVDs that claims they can teach your child to read. (I am not one of those moms who are anti-TV, but I felt the later he became addicted to the tube the better it was for me, my 25 TV shows and my PVR! )

I started with a lot of black and white picture books (as they say newborns can only see black and white) and he would just lie in my arms and look at the book as I turned the pages and talked about each picture

We then moved on to some rhyming more colourful books – which he didn’t seem to mind either. He looked at the pictures and seemed somewhat engaged in what we were doing (or so I told myself). I now also put him on the floor and turned the book towards him so he could look directly at it.

By about six months, when he could sit up by himself, we moved on to “touch and feel” books where I could take his hand to feel the textures on the page while we talked about them. He really started to enjoy this and it wasn’t long until he was doing the touching all by himself.

The next type of books that we tried was the “Lift the Flap” style books and these just amazed him. He could spend hours looking at the same book and lifting the flap to discover the hidden pictures. We were still not really reading the books, but more so looking at the pictures and discussing what we saw. I tended to choose books that either had pictures of babies or animals as these seemed to catch his interest the most.

At about 12 months, his love for books really started to show. He was now crawling over to the basket of books, pulling them out and looking at them on his own. Here I saw just how much he had learned from those reading sessions with us. He knew how to hold the book properly (not upside down), that a book is read from left to right and how to turn the pages all on his own! Take that my sceptical friends!

Now at 16 months, all I have to do is just sit on the floor and he will go and grab a book from the basket and bring it back to me and climb into my lap so we can share it together (repeatedly). He has his favourites that we read over and over, and some of them we don’t even read – just look and talk about what we see. He can point to different things in the books and say their names or find them if you ask him where they are.

These moments to me are priceless and I enjoy our daily reading time and am excited about how much he has learned already. Do I want him to be one of those kids who spends all day in his room reading instead of playing outside? No - but I do want him to understand the importance of reading and perhaps once in awhile pick up a book just because he WANTS to read it.

Guest Blogger: Erin Ryan