Reading to Your Baby
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I started reading to my daughter(Currently 20 months old)when she was still in the womb at around 5 months old (When her auditory was well developed).
When I bought her a Nursery Rhymes book at 1 1/2 months, she paid full attention to it everytime I flipped the book. She started to flip the books on her own and babbling (As pretending she knows how to read) when she was 6 months old. When she was a year old, she was able to speak around 100 vocabs and if you asked her to show you the particular picture on the book, she would stare or point at the picture accurately.
Now she was able to sing some nursery rhymes or fill in the blank the lost words for most nursery rhymes. I never force her to read, indeed she would ask me to read for her from time to time.(To the extend my mind struggled, "Could you give me a break?").
It proves to me that the earlier you read to your children, the earlier they learn and it would probably become a habit for them to read!
My little ones have short attention spans too some days! When they slam the books closed, I fight the urge to make them stay 'til the very end! I'd certainly hate to make them think that reading together is some sort of punishment!
I should've mentioned something in my article about reading to your unborn baby! What a fantastic way to bond with your child. (A better idea, even, than putting headphones on your belly and having your baby listen to Mozart!)
The picture is of my one and only daughter, Ella, and her daddy. She is the epitome of the term "daddy's little princess." Two years later, she will still lay still and cuddle with him like that.
So glad to hear so many people are reading to their babies early and even before birth. I didn't start reading to my oldest son until he was a couple of weeks old but he was reading on his own at three. When he and his wife got pregnant he read the entire Chronicles of Narnia with his head resting on her belly. All three of my son's son's love books and reading. The importance of reading to babies cannot be over stressed.
As a middle school reading teacher, I cannot express how important it is to read to your babies and toddlers. There are so many wonderful books out there and they are easily available. If you cannot afford to buy them, there are public libraries in every community. Use them! You can also get books at garage sales and thrift shops that are very inexpensive. I also want to stress how important nursery rhymes and classic fairy tales are. Nursery rhymes help our children learn phonics so they are better equipped to read. It saddens me when I refer to a particular nursery rhyme or fairy tale, and my students have no idea what I'm talking about. Read to your little ones and show them how enjoyable it can be!
I can't stress the importance of this enough. I write on this subject often on both my web site and my blog to try to help people see the need to begin reading to their children at an early age. Some pediatricians are even prescribing it because it is so important to brain development. Check this article for some hints on making the most of reading aloud: http://barbsbooks.wordpress.com/2009/01/21/when-you-read-aloud-ham-it-up/. Reading aloud is not only fun for the child, it can be just as much fun for the person doing the reading, which makes the bonding even stronger.
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My baby (now a 1-year-old toddler) has very short attention span. Many a times, when I read to him, after going thru 1 or 2 or 3 pages, he will grab the back cover of the book and forcefully close it as if telling me, "Mommy, enough! I don't want to read some more!"