Shortly after my daughter turned 6 months old, my mother asked if I read to her daily.
The answer was no, but only because the last few times I'd tried, she'd shown more interest in chewing the books than in hearing them.
Some babies will sit at that age and listen to entire stories. But others--mine among them--will not. And while it's true that reading to babies is crucial for developing language and literacy, parents of wriggly youngsters who would rather eat the book than listen to it need not despair. Just keep trying.
Research shows that reading to young children helps foster brain development. Language skills are sharpest early in life. Talking or reading to babies, experts say, speeds up their process of learning new words. Even a 6-month-old can recognize the vowel sounds that are the basic building blocks of speech. The companionship, physical contact, and soft, sing-song voice that parents use to read also help to strengthen emotional bonds.
"It's a signal from me to the babies that says, 'I'm going to pay attention to you now,'" says Milwaukee mother Marge Eiseman, who has four sons ranging in age from 17 months to 8 years. "I can't do any of the stuff that will divert my attention. I can do a lot of stuff and watch the kid, but if a child is sitting in my lap with a book in front of us, that's it. That's the one thing that gets my attention."
Eiseman began reading to her sons when they were between 5 and 6 months old. That they didn't start to pay attention until they were 14 to 16 months old didn't bother her. "I just hoped they didn't destroy the book," she says.
