Health, Taken Seriously

Last week, I recommended a book I’d just finished reading–The Read-Aloud Handbook.  I must confess that in our house, we read A LOT to our 3-year old.  He gets 5-10 books read to him each day, sometimes totaling more than an hour of reading.  We have recently given chapter books a try and he’ll actually sit through them and request more chapters.  However, I find it really challenging to read to my 14-month old.  He’s more active than his older brother and just won’t sit still for books.  If he will sit still, I can get through about half of a board book before he’s lost interest.  He is also somewhat destructive to the books I do try to read to him–tearing out flaps and throwing small board books.  I’m sad to say that somewhere around 9 months of age, I gave up reading regularly to him.  But then I read the Read-Aloud Handbook.

In the book, the author tells the story of a mother who found it difficult to read to her baby too.  Her solution was to read while the daughter was in her high chair.  Then she had no choice but to listen.  I tried this in our home.  It worked like a charm.  Both my one and three year old enjoyed the meal time stories and no books were destroyed.  I also took the author’s suggestion and starting keeping books in multiple places throughout our house.  Most notable was a large magazine rack that has multiple shelves that I turned into a board book holder.  The rack was such that most of the books face out and this too was suggested by the author.

The amazing thing came about 3-4 weeks after I began doing this.  My 14-month old suddenly started loving books.  He’d crawl over to the book corners in the living room or in his room, pull out books and flip through their pages on his own.  He would even bring the books to me, hoping I’d read them.  His attention span is still pretty lousy but occasionally if he’s in the right mood, he’ll ask me to read several books so many times in a row that we end up reading for 20-30 min!  This is an eternity for a one year old!!  He gets so excited by certain books that he signs “more” after every page.  Other books, he starts signing more by the 2nd to last page, just in case I was thinking of putting it down when I reached the end.  I can’t believe what a change I’ve seen in my son is such a short time.  Imagine all the things that are possible with children if adults just put their minds to something and really try!