Reading with Baby

I cannot overemphasize the important of reading to your child, even a child as young as a few days old. Well, ok, I could overemphasize it, I could say something crazy like, "If you don't read to your child, the sun will explode." But still, I made my point: reading is very important.

Ever since Baby J. came home from the hospital, we have been reading to her. We read to her every night. We read to her during playtime. We read to her at each nap. Already, my daughter has developed a love affair with books. She can't read the words, but she recognizes them when we read the books to her. She remembers the pictures, and she associates the pictures with words. I've read her a book with cows in it many times, and the other day, one of us read that book, and she got up, grabbed a toy cow and brought it over to us.

When you talk to your child, you don't tend to make associations, at least not all of the time. It's too difficult to always do that in conversation. How often can I remember that every time I talk I need to point to things about which I'm speaking? Or that when I'm having a conversation with her, I need emphasize the important words? Reading takes care of that for you.

Also, reading this early has made my daughter love books. Recently, bathtime was abyssmal. Every time we put her in the bath, she got upset. She couldn't stand it. Then, we got one of those water books, the kind of plastic pages so it's ok for the bath. Now, when it comes to bathtime, she sits calmly, and I read her book to her while she looks at each page and points at all the pictures.

And at naptime and bedtime, reading her books consistently has become part of the routine. When we read her the last book of the night, she becomes drowsy. She makes the association with reading before bed with getting ready for sleep. And it makes putting her down for the night that much easier.

Getting your child to love books early on means it's going to be that much easier to get them to love reading later on. She already loves books. It's not going to be nearly as difficult to sit down with her and teach her the alphabet and teach her how to sound out words and how to read sentences than it would have been had she never had any interest in books. A lifetime love affair with reading will mean our baby will perform better in school, she will better understand comprehension, she will be better equipped to learn on her own.

D.