Growing up, my mom used to always tell us "If you can read, you can do anything!" If we could read directions, we could do our homework. If we could read a recipe, we could cook and feed ourselves and thus, would never starve. If we could read, we could do anything. I carried on those words to my second grade students and recently found myself saying those words to our two year old.
Whitney didnt love books when she was an infant. She would wiggle and squirm when I tried reading to her in my rocking chair, and I worried that she would never love to read the way I do. Alas, those fears have been dashed to smithereens as this toddler would rather read 100 books than watch TV. She is frequently heard asking, "Mommy, will you weed this to me, pwease?" while holding out a book. She LOVES books and really gets into the stories. She laughs at all the right parts and gets nervous when there is a "scary" part in a story. She mimics our reading style when she "reads" to her baby dolls, making deep voices for Papa Bear and high-pitched squeaky voices for small children in stories. I LOOOVE that she is loving books, wants to be read to, and is even pretending to read on her own in bed at night. As a teacher and a mother, these pre-reading skills are making my heart happy :)
Yes, we have fallen into the typical toddler "trap" of reading the same handful of books over and over and over and over and over and over again, but I have always said that I will drop everything when my kid asks me to read to her, and so far, I have made good on the promise. Even if it means reading and re-reading "The New Baby" 14,000 times in a week.
AND...it appears all this reading is paying off....as Whitney is paying attention and polishing her reading skills at two years old :)
The book is "The Berenstain Bears and the New Baby". It was mine when I was little, and I remember it being a favorite. Whitney could listen to this book over and over again, back to back to back, all day and night. I suppose it was no surprise when she told us, "No, *I* want to weed it to YOU guys!" when we tried to read it to her at bedtime last week. She is very difficult to understand in some parts, as she mumbles and speeds through the words, but she read it to my mom the next day and got 95% of the words correct with the proper inflection and tone. She has memorized a lot of songs (I think she knows the words to every Taylor Swift song on my ipod, not to mention some Adele, Maroon 5, and other mainstream artists) and nursery rhymes, prayers, and several short board books she's had since birth. But I think she blew us away with her word-for-word "reading" of a book this long and detailed. :)
I have managed to instill a love of books and reading in my two year old. My work is done :)
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