CHEWABLE BOOKS
To be safe, Eiseman kept a supply of cardboard, plastic, and vinyl books around the house--a good thing to do when you're reading to young children, confirms Barbara Kiefer, associate professor of reading and children's literature at Columbia University Teachers College in New York City.
"Even up to age 2, they probably still won't know completely how to deal with a book," Kiefer says. "They're so tactile and so oral in the first year that the books that you share with them probably need to be pretty sturdy and also pretty simple in text."
Kiefer says parents should take their cues from their children. "I think you have to let them be in charge," she says. "They tend to know what their agenda is."
For at least the first year, that agenda usually includes grabbing the book, chewing on it, drooling on it, tossing it, and flipping the pages at a rate that, while it might not make your head spin, will at least make your hair blow. But even that sort of purely physical reaction doesn't mean you're wasting your time reading to your child.
"[Your child is] fascinated with her own dexterity, and you capitalize on it," Dr. Rennert says. "If she stops at a page for a minute, you don't have to read the whole text. You can say, 'What a beautiful flower that is.' Gradually the baby will come to open the page, and one day she'll come up to you and say, 'flower.'"
Or you can do what Needham, Massachusetts parents Pam and Tom Griswold did when it became apparent that their young son, Ted, wasn't about to sit still for a story: They put off establishing a regular routine.
From time to time, the Griswolds would read a nursery rhyme or poem to Ted--something that could be accomplished "in a matter of seconds," Pam recalls. "The interest wasn't there, and I wasn't going to wrestle. But all of a sudden, at 1-1/2, the lightbulb went on and the patience level for the child was there."
By the time he was 2-1/2, Ted, like many young children, had begun to memorize the book and was able to "read it" back to his parents. Today, at 8, he's one of the best readers and writers in his third-grade class.
A TIME TO CUDDLE
But reading to Ted wasn't something the Griswolds did in an effort to create another Einstein or Steinbeck, nor should that be the agenda for any parent of a young child.
"It's just a time for you to cuddle," Kiefer says. "Just the warm emotional closeness that [children] share with a parent, and the sound of your voice reading is different from when you talk with them. It should be pleasurable."
With that in mind, I've started reading to Elizabeth again. I keep books throughout the house so I can pick one up when the moment seems right.
Sometimes she crawls off my lap mid-story because she'd rather play with the knobs on the stereo. Other times she'll turn the pages before I've managed to complete a sentence, so I follow Dr. Rennert's advice and improvise.
Lately, though, she's been willing to sit for an entire story. It could be a function of her advanced age--she just turned 1--but I'd like to think it's because, as Kiefer and Rennert say, she's starting to understand what books are about. And she likes them.
