Our son hasn’t always loved reading. When we first tried to read to him he wasn’t interested at all. He’d much rather nurse or sleep with mom. Later on his preference was to be able to hold something that made a noise when he moved it. After that his life was all about rolling around. This progressed to sitting and crawling and eventually standing. Pretty soon he was walking and running and doing all sorts of devious things (like removing books from bookshelves — not to read but to create a mess). As time continued on though he eventually came around to the concept of reading as something worth his time. His progress has been amazing.
I’m sure that earlier I exaggerated when speaking about how often our son might have me read him a book. Yes, reading the same children’s book more than once doesn’t really excite adults (there are like 3 words maximum per page) but we do it anyway. It feels like a lot. I didn’t realize that our son would eventually want to read a book that many times. I kept track recently and I read a certain book fifteen times before he decided that the ball on the floor needed to be played with. Fifteen! That’s so many! How could I stop though? He was really excited.
All of the reading has apparently paid off. He’s been learning a lot simple by looking at words, pictures, and hearing his parent’s voices. One book features a name over and over again and he started saying that name. The confidence in those sounds has led him to “ball” and “water” and something approximating “all done” (which is really helpful when he’s “eating” and a mess surrounds him). It is undoubtedly the reading that has prompted both the attempt and success with verbal language. I’d be lying if I said that I wasn’t excited to talk with our son. I’m looking forward to it.