4 comments

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  wahoodad

  2 years ago

  I think two other things that help kids warm up to reading are:
  
  1. Make it part of your routine. Bedtime is the easiest way to incorporate daily reading. Do it every day. Take your kids\' favorite books on vacation with you, too. While the bedtime setting may be different, the routine can stay the same.
  
  2. Lead by example. If your kid sees you reading, he\'ll be more interested in reading. (Tangent: They have this feature in Sports Illustrated that\'s a grid with four or five athletes in the first column and a series of questions about current events, pop culture, etc. in the first row. It\'s supposed to show how tuned in the athletes are to what\'s going on, what\'s hip, etc. In one issue, SI asked each to name the last book he or she had read. Two of the four said \"I don\'t read books.\" Way to go!)
  
  The only tip above that I think should be qualified a little is finishing the book every time. I\'d say to do this only if your kid wants to finish the book every time. If not, your kid might feel like he\'s being forced into something and react negatively to it (like when you try to make them clean their plate everytime).
  
  Noodad is right, though. Keep it fun for both of you to get the most out of reading to your kid.
  
  (One more thing, if you pre-dads want to start reading to the baby before the arrival, get a copy of \"Oh, Baby, the Places You\'ll Go! A Book to be Read In Utero\" It\'s a fun book to read aloud and will bring back a lot of memories of Dr. Seuss characters and stories.)
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  harry

  2 years ago

  My 16 month old son went through a \"phase\" where the idea of sitting on his parents\' laps for the even length of Good Night Moon just wasn\'t his idea of a good time, so for that time (a couple weeks) we just sat on the floor next to him in front of his bookshelf while he \"read\" and we read other books aloud to him. That way he still recognized it as a part of his day to engage in books, and still came to recognize the stories that he was hearing over and over and over and over and over again.
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  qsmama

  2 years ago

  Not sure I agree with the advice always to finish the book. There have been plenty of times Baby A (turned 2 in June) simply wasn\'t going to sit still. Her attention was gone--and it would\'ve been silly for me to sit reading \"Froggy Searches for Shapes\" to myself.
  
  Another idea is to tell plenty of made-up stories, without books (or make your own with pictures from magazines). Our current favorite is \"Tiny Baby A,\" the story of me and my husband falling in love, wanting a baby, joyously welcoming A into our lives, then all the things we did to take care of her. (\"And the mommy and daddy helped their tiny baby nurse so she had a full tummy, and sang songs to her and hugged her when she cried so she\'d feel all better....\")
  
  She *eats it up.* I guess little kids like to hear about themselves, just like us adults.
  
  - L
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  redhawk

  2 years ago

  Many important abilities stem from reading skill, and you\'re totally right in encouraging an early start. In all of my studies and work in schools I learned that kids with parents who read to, with, and in front of them had fewer academic problems than those for whom the converse was true.
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