One of the things about keeping an online journal of any kind is that, overtime, it becomes a place of reflection. Children grow, opinions change, we learn new things. And yet our words, unless we go back and delete old entries (which I don’t), are forever written on the walls of cyberspace.
I have not yet decided whether this is a good thing or not.
Recently, I (okay, my husband), completed the process of moving Once Upon A Story completely over to the self-hosted site. In the process, I rediscovered posts from the “old” site. One of my most popular posts, even today, was titled I Don’t “Read” to My Baby. If you’re a newer follower, here’s a brief excerpt:
I don’t read to Baby 20 minutes every day. At least, not officially. I have two degrees, one in elementary education, one in library science. I wholeheartedly support and believe in all the evidence that supports reading to children at an early age. What I don’t have is time set aside, or a baby who is interested in anything other than chewing his toes for more than 10 seconds at a time.
I did go on to explain ways that Baby is exposed to language, but it was one of those posts where I hit enter and wondered how many readers I had just lost with my “going against the grain” philosophy. As it turns out, the post received multiple hits, was shared many times, and, in general, I think said what alot of parents were thinking.
That was then.
Now?
I still stand by that post. Baby is now 13 months, and entering the stage of constant noise and babble. I can see that he understands alot more than he can verbalize, but those verbalized words are starting to pop out.
And we still don’t have a “cuddle and read before bed” type of routine. With my daughter, this didn’t come about till closer to her second birthday and it looks like my son will be the same way. For the first 10 months of his life, he consistently woke up 3-4 times a night. Sleep was hard for him. By the end of the day, he was too tired to cuddle, he wanted a bottle (which he typically fell asleep during) and bed. He has since started sleeping through the night, but is not a fantastic napper, so he’s still tired by the end of the day. His preference is still bath, jammies, straight into bed. And yet, he’s surrounded by chatter and learning and books throughout the day, and he’s picking up on it.
Kids are amazing learners.
It won’t be long before I have two constant chatterboxes in the house.
God help me. 
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I’m sure baby got plenty of verbal stimulation from mom and that baby will be exposed to a lot of great books throughout his/her life from you! He/She is so lucky to have a librarian for a mom!
I appreciate your awareness that language develops from more than a 20-minute lap sit, still those early storytimes are some of my very favorite memories. If I could go back in time, I’d read more often – especially to the youngest two sons.
I think that those 20 minute lapsits are gone too fast, too (though my children are still young, so we’re still at the phase where they’re pushing/shoving/yelling to be the dominant child in my lap). But I also think that there’s a misconception that those 20 minutes need to be completed in one sitting, and with the traditional turn-the-page-one-at-a-time mentality. I may have particularly active children, but no WAY is my 13 month old sitting on my lap for 20 minutes. And when I can get him to sit still for 10 seconds and read with me, he chooses which pages we look at–and they’re usually not sequential. I have to agree, though…it is nice when they snuggle down and settle in. I’m hoping my youngest gets there someday
My deep secret was that I *hated* re-reading picture books, so I wouldn’t do it. We could read the same book every night, but only once. Well, twice, but I had to be bribed with a kiss. But that was my limit. I figured reading should be fun for all of us, so I didn’t force myself to do stuff I hated.
This post made me laugh. I don’t read to my baby either. In fact, my husband was trying to read to him, and he kept trying to eat the book.
Haha!
Oh boy…kids!