Future Homeschooler: I can't read around my 15mo

[laurac5]

... and I haven't been able to for the last year! At around three months old, dd started grabbing at the pages of any book I tried to read while I was nursing her, and at every stage since then, she has been so curious about books ( -- I think...) that I can't hold a book still enough to read it while she's in the room. I try to sneak in time to read after she's gone to bed, but it's hardly 15 minutes at a time.

We had to put one of her bookshelves in her closet, and we turned around her other one to face the wall. We banked a coffee table up against the bookshelves in our living room. Before we did this, she would take every book off the shelf, and start flipping through them, sometimes crumpling or tearing pages. This started around the time she started crawling.

She is our first, and DH and I are planning to homeschool her when the time comes. So I am trying to take advantage of the next few years to preread books that we will use for school. Plus, everything I hear about how to encourage children to love reading says to read around your kids.

So my question is -- do any of you have children who used to be like that? Did they grow out of it on their own? Did they end up loving reading even though they never saw you reading? Or did you find ways to read around them after all? For months I've been waiting for this stage to be over, but after a year I'm just feeling like I need to learn how to work through it instead of waiting for it to pass...

Sorry if this doesn't quite belong on the homeschooling forum, but I thought I might find more people who have survived that stage here than on the toddlers forum...

[onyxravnos]

it takes a while sometimes but they do grow out of it!

my suggestion is to go to a thrift store and get some board books. read them to her if you can but she will have a hard time hurting them as she 'reads' them herself.

[Momma Aimee]

both my boys

With my first little boy -- he has always loooved to be read to -- but didn't want ME to read my stuff. He was pulling all the books off shelves to read and look at when he could get himself there and sit up.

We took all the paper paged books -- his and ours -- and put them on upper shelves. the bookself in the living room and our bedroom (all of them) -- we tookt he bottom shelf, and eventaulally two -- and put his books on them (yes we have a ton).

we a lot of reminding he learned by 2 or so to be soft with paper pages but he was well past two before he got to a point of letting me read my stuff. But i read to him -- literally for hours at a time when i was preggo and when we had a new born (newbie born when older was 23 months)

Chalres my younger has always been a more active kid. he is now 227 months and barely sits for books. he likes them, will bring them to me, but he has to wander and gooph while we read.

he has always been harder on paper pages, but he is getting it. about 20 months maybe 22 he started to be trust worhy with books.

my books are still up out of reach -- and their good books (hardback collection of fairtytales and so on). We also have boxes of my books from when i was little, some i have put up high others are on their shelves.

they have the bottem two shelves on the living room shelf adn the bedroom shelf in our room, and they have a shelf in their room DH made them. they have several paper paged boosk now (little golden books and so on) and they are doing fine with them.

both by boys love reading to themselves, pointing to things, talking to the book and themselv about it, yelling sometimes. to me free access to as many books as possible at all times is vital for a love of reading adn better education futer homeschooled or not. We have always -- since birth of the first -- had a ton of books that they could handle and even chew on.

we also allow them to look at our books, either with supervion or not, based on the book, when they want to.

if DD is 15 months, I'd say another 5 till things improve.

we read here 45 2x a day at least, and usally more.

And as for "seeing you read" -- I keep a book in the car. if we stop and wait for Daddy to run in some place, i read. I keep a book on the kitchen counter -- and for a long time did all my reading standing in the kitchen to protect the books.

[laurac5]

Thanks for your replies! Aimee, I have read to dd while standing up, but I never thought to do my own reading standing up -- I think that might just work for me.

We do have a number of board books that we let dd play with on her own -- these are mostly twaddly books we got for free, so I don't mind if she's rough on them. (She still likes to bend the front cover around to the back sometimes, or put the book in her mouth.)

We also have a collection of special board books which I would consider to be a toddler's version of a "living book." (Can you tell we're going to be CM homeschoolers?) These are the ones I prefer to read to her, and we're trying to keep them nice so they'll last through more children.

I have also thought of memorizing some poetry to recite to her instead of having to bring out the physical books... might be time go get on that if I only have 5 months left of her being a book menace! (Not that I would mind!)

[Momma Aimee]

Originally Posted by laurac5

Thanks for your replies! Aimee, I have read to dd while standing up, but I never thought to do my own reading standing up -- I think that might just work for me.

We do have a number of board books that we let dd play with on her own -- these are mostly twaddly books we got for free, so I don't mind if she's rough on them. (She still likes to bend the front cover around to the back sometimes, or put the book in her mouth.)

We also have a collection of special board books which I would consider to be a toddler's version of a "living book." (Can you tell we're going to be CM homeschoolers?) These are the ones I prefer to read to her, and we're trying to keep them nice so they'll last through more children.

I have also thought of memorizing some poetry to recite to her instead of having to bring out the physical books... might be time go get on that if I only have 5 months left of her being a book menace! (Not that I would mind!)

you can also read while you wait in the car

read to her while she isn in tub and so on

and just keep reminding her to be kind to the books, it will kick in -- i promise.

[Savoir Faire]

That's pretty normal-- I don't think either of my kids ever sat still during reading time. Especially my son-- he was grabbing, pulling, hitting, tugging at the book-- it was really a cat and mouse game at bedtime.

I never read when my kids were that young-- I didn't have the time! They were two under 2...and I was totally losing my mind. Now that they are (almsot) 4 and 5...I'm reading a lot more.

Hang in there. I've yet to see a 5-year-old who is tearing at the pages....

[Mary-Beth]

My first two kids were bringing me books to read to them as young as 13 months...baby books, song books, etc. Now my 3rd child sees books as an object to throw. I have cloth books and board books and I try to point to pictures I think might interest him. But I am not worried. I let him play with the books even if it means stacking them like blocks or throwing them.