Last week (just a few days shy of turning 1 year), Baby S picked her book from the shelf, toddled toward me and sat down in my lap so I could read the book she just picked out. As she did this, I think I heard angels singing. It felt like this is the reason I exist and have built my whole life for. As I shared this incident with friends and family, I got this comment from a few:
“you’re so lucky you got a reader of a baby!”
And it got me thinking about writing a blog post to tell a story. I am grateful for how compliant Baby S has been with the reading program. Yet this wasn’t an accident. We have made concerted efforts in cultivating her interest in books. Today, I’d like to share that with dads and moms that would like to do the same with their kiddo!
We All Want Them To Read
Let’s all come clean for a second. As parents, we want everything good for our kids. Sometimes selfishly so. We watch our kids’ sugar and junk food consumption like hawks and indulge in soda and chips ourselves. We limit their screen time and after they’re asleep we spend hours Netflixing. Getting kids to read often falls under one of these contradicting categories that we, as parents, too often engage in. We as parents go on months sometimes years without picking up a book, and we hope our kids turn out to be the most voracious readers. Except, to get kids to read is different from limiting sugar or watching TV while they sleep – they have to WANT to read!
They say parenting is caught not taught. At some points, all we can do as parents is to try to model what we think is best for our kids, instead of telling them what the right thing to do is. When kids are young, it’s easy to control their life choices and dictate their actions. But one day they will go on in life being the agent of their own body and life. I can’t imagine that just yet with my one-year-old, but I know it’s real! So our best bet is simply to model the behavior we want them to have… which brings me to my first point.
*Disclaimer*: I am not a medical professional or child development expert. I am, however, what you would call an active reader. And with my sample size of 1 child, please consider this post a case study with my best effort and intention!
1. Be a reader yourself (even if it’s just a magazine)
Create a habit of finding some form of reading material, sit down, and engage your full mind with it for at least 10-15 minutes. It would be even better if the reading material is something you are interested in, so you don’t feel like you’re being forced to read. What you’re doing is that you are modeling this: the commitment and discipline of reading despite life (busy schedule, lots of other entertainment forms to choose from, etc.) I think the first time Sophia picked up a book and flipped through it, she was honestly imitating me. She would look at me, and flip through the book, and look at me again, as if asking “am I doing it right?” It was the cutest thing.
2. Read with them & make it FUN
In the early days (under 12 months), keep spending time reading to your kids even if they don’t seem to “get it”. They may treat books like teethers. They may only pay attention for 2 seconds and move onto other things. They may even be destructive with the books you have for them. It’s okay! It’s all part of their learning about what books are! Even if the time spent “reading” to your kids may not match what you’re imagining, keep at it. Sing to them, dance with them, make it a game involving books… whatever you do, remember, it’s supposeed to be fun! So tailor it to their age level! One day when you least expect it, your little one turns around and be asking you to read a book to them!
3. Have a variety of books to choose from
To make it easier to “keep going” even though they don’t get it, keep trying new kinds of books to see what if they respond to ones more than others. Find books that have pop-up features, books that are abundant in colors, books that have different textures, books that play music, or books that have flaps that they can play with. They may not know the concept of “books” yet, but they are sure to know the concept of “toys”! Books are supposed to be fun. So don’t take the fun out of reading for them!
4. Make it a habit
This one is a no brainer. The point is to persist even if they don’t seem interested or don’t seem to “get it.” Just like any good habits you may want to cultivate in your kids, it takes time to make reading a “thing.” Also, it’s a fact that kids thrive on having routines. So make reading with them a regular thing. Make it a point to read 3-5 books a day at least. That’s what I did with Baby S starting at 6/7 months of age, around the time she started crawling.
5. Limit screen time & toys
It’s generally a good practice to limit screen time to zero for kids under 18 months (as the American Pediatric Association recommends.) But outside of the physiological damage to kids’ developing eyes and brain, watching TV/iPads/hones has a more hidden and indirect side effect. When they’re watching something on a screen, they’re not spending time with YOU or anything that interacts with them. Human contact and communication are what fosters growth in kids’ mental development and not the one-way-communication they get from screens. It doesn’t matter how educational the video makers claim their production is… the truth is you or another caregiver is always a better alternative.
So, it’s not that screen time in and of itself is bad. It’s that it takea away something better – time spent interacting with you!
In conclusion…
At the onset of our parenting journey, I knew I want books to be an imporrtant part of Baby S’s life. In a way, I am trying to replicate my childhood here with Baby S. I think I am lucky in that my mother raised me with not a lot of toys but always an abundance of books. I knew I may not be allowed to have barbies but I could have as many books as I wanted very early on. I think what my parents were teaching us was how to value things in life. Toys are fun but the entertainment is short-lived. Books take patience, effort, and sometimes commitment to get to, but the values they provide could last for a life-time. It made a writer out of me, at the very least.