Does Reading to Babies Really Work?

Lisa — Sun, 24 May 2009 10:20:03 +0000

I’ve talked before about how much I love reading, right?

(No no, don’t groan.)

So yeh, I love reading. Make that an absolutelyhavetoorIwilldie kinda love of reading.

Then it should come as no surprise to you that even though he’s only one year old, I already encourage literacy in Jack-Evan.

I’ve been reading daily to my son since he was born – or, at least trying to. Sometimes we miss a few days of reading, but more often or not, he encounters some form of literacy component in his daily life even if it’s just him watching me read silently. Our read-aloud materials run the gamut from Mother Goose Nursery Rhymes to Sondra Boynton to Dr. Suess to Classic Poetry to Pilgrims Progress to (more recently) Lord of the Rings. For at least an hour each day, usually around noon, I read aloud to Jack while he’s playing on the floor near me. We also have spontaneous reading sessions at the park, at bedtime, or just whenever the mood hits. Then, once a week (twice a week beginning in June) for 45 minutes we’re at the library story time for toddlers.

I also spell out things for him often, point out words, and do sign-language finger spelling of his name and other various words. We have sung the ABC song a couple times a week with him since birth too.

In addition to spelling, finger-spelling, and the daily reading, we also use the “Your Baby Can Read” DVD’s and Flashcards. They’re actually the only things that Jack-Evan watches, or even shows any interest in watching, on the TV (besides when he watches Scooby Doo with his PaPa!). Each DVD lesson on “Your Baby Can Read” (there are 6 lessons total, I believe) lasts around 30 minutes and builds upon each other. I played the starter lesson once or twice a week for a few months, but within the last 2 months, Jack has shown so much interest in the program that I’ve moved him up from the starter lesson to the 1st lesson. He’ll actually sit through the entire 30 minutes and interact with everything going on in the lesson, and he’s beginning to pick up words like crazy from it. Last week, they showed the written word Bubble in the lesson, then they said “Bubble” – and he repeated “Bubble” out loud, then laughed. He gets so exited when I tell him I’m putting his DVD on and he’ll stand up and starts dancing to the opening music. For the past month or so, the lesson has played twice a day with Jack-Evan focused completely on it and interacting with it to the exclusion of everything else.

Also, now that Jack is a year old (his birthday was May 4) I have added the other component of the “Your Baby Can Read” DVD learning system – the flashcards. These flashcards include 12 key words that match up to the words he is learning in the video lessons. There are 6 doublesided pastel colored cards with just plain comic-sans type black words printed on them. What’s cool though is it also has a slide out panel that features a picture of the word shown.

Now, let me be frank before I continue.

When I started all of this, I wasn’t sure what would work and what wouldn’t. There were times when I wasn’t sure if I was doing the right thing or not (I’m still not, and probably never will be). I never was a fan of flashcards for babies so every time I even looked at them before, I just rolled my eyes. I’m also not one of those moms believes in forcing a child to do formal learning. At the first sign that Jack-Evan is tired of something I move on to something else, immediately. But I do believe wholeheartedly in offering opportunities and new experiences each and every day. And I believe wholeheartedly in the power of literacy at an early age (I myself was reading at 2 years old without any formal prompting from my own mom). My husband was 5 years old before he ever had anything read aloud to him – and that has strongly affected his reading ability even to this day. The written word should be part of a child’s life from day one – I just wasn’t sure how to go about introducing it to Jack-Evan during his first year of life. Therefore, as any mom would do, I just did the best I could.

So anyway….

At first, I felt like everything I was doing – the reading aloud, storytime, and DVD lessons – made absolutely no impact whatsoever on Jack. For the first 10 months of his life, he showed absolutely no interest whatsoever in books, pictures, stories, rhymes, nor poetry. Zero. Zip. Nada. No interest whatsoeva. Yet I kept on plowing away with reading and showing him the starter video of “Your Baby Can Read” once a week or so. At times, I even felt foolish reading to him and as much as I hate to admit it, I hated reading aloud. (Or rather, I use to hate it, though not so much anymore). He just wasn’t responding to my efforts at all, and I began to feel disappointed. I mean, I had read so many testimonies of parents who’s 3 month old child would stare intently at a book during storytime, or who’s 6, 7, 8 month old child would sit raptured by the board book being read, or by the 9 month old who would hand her mom her favorite book to read. Then there were the local children -babies who were the same age as Jack- at our own library story time who would sit and show interest in the story, while Jack didn’t even have a clue that a story was being read.

I felt foolish, I felt it was pointless, I felt like he wasn’t ready, I felt like all of those testimonies were lies, I felt like I should just wait until he was 3 or 4 or 5 or 6….I just felt….like giving up.

But I didn’t. I just kept on with my plan of immersing him into daily literacy. I wanted those doors to be wide open for him whenever he was ready to blossom.

Then, slowly, in his 10th month, a miracle happened and he blossomed.

His first step towards acknowledging the world of books came 3 months ago when he suddenly picked up a book and, instead of trying to eat it, he opened it and began flipping through it. By the end of March, he began bouncing to the rhythm of the poems being read. By the beginning of April, he had formed his first attatchment to a book – “Brown Bear, Brown Bear” and would grab it when I would start reciting it from memory.

So now, back to the flashcards. Roughly 8 days ago, I pulled out the flashcards that go with the DVD reading lessons. We went through all 12 words slowly, and then I decided to concentrate mostly on two main words – “arms up” and “dog”. Dog is actually one of the first words that Jack said, and he adores dogs. Anywhere we go, if he spots a dog either in real life or in photos he lights up and yells “Hello dog! A dog, dog, dog!!! Hey there! Huh Dog!”. As for the other one, “Arms UP”, that’s just something that was fun to do.

Well, after only 3 shows of the “arms up” card, he had that one mastered (complete with him throwing his own arms up, along with mommy, and giggling). He also adored the “dog” one (of course).

Since then, we’ve used those cards no more than 4 sessions for about 3-4 minutes each session.

Friday, we were sitting on the couch playing with the cards, and I sat him down on the floor, tossed all 6 cards down randomly for him to rummage through, then settled back to read my Woman’s Day magazine (silently!), hoping for a few moments of peace whilst he played by himself.

Not surprisingly, I didn’t get much peace. Within less than a minute, Jack was standing up beside the couch, crying “Mummum, Mum mum!” and holding his one hand out for me to pick him up. It’s what was in his other hand that surprised me! During the few moments that I had been absorbed in my magazine, he had found and picked out both the “Dog” and the “Arms Up” card from amongst all 12 words.

I was in shock. Finally, progress. I AM doing something right. Something, s-o-m-e-t-h-i-n-g I’m doing is working, and is clicking in his little brain!

It was a nice reassurance.

He repeated the feat of picking out those two cards yesterday in front of his dad, which elicited the exact same shock. Last night, he also picked out the “Dog” card, turned it over, looked at it, then said aloud “Dog, Dog”.

More reassurance.

So my kid is like me afterall. He loves flashcards.

And a new door has opened very wide for him.

Little Jack's Corner » Mother Goose Nursery

Does Reading to Babies Really Work?

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