Posted by I can’t really hide that I’m a huge literacy nerd. I started reading books about the value of reading books when I was in high school. It continued through college and early marriage. So by the time I made it through our 3-1/2 year adoption process with Million, I was prepped and fired up.
He got the linguistic equivalent of a fireman’s hose directed right at him.
Literature rich environment? No baby talk? Parental dramatic reading? Vocabulary enhancement?
Check.
(And it worked. He is one of the most verbal children I’ve ever met.)
But when Creedence came along, I started lagging in my enthusiasm. I just didn’t have the time to dedicate hours a day to reading to TWO little boys. So I continued to read to Million, but just let Creedence kind of play in the background. I read board books almost every day, but Creedence did not experience nearly the amount of intentional one-on-one reading time (or depth of literature excellence) that Million did.
This second-born mama felt extreme amounts of guilt that she was stifling the intellectual growth of her second-born child.
Then Creedence felt a desire to listen to books, but he could not sit still longer than 5 minutes.
(I realize this is normal, given his age…but our first child would willingly sit for 30 to 40 minutes immediately after he came home from Ethiopia, so that’s all we had to go on….)
I was worried that Creedence would never like books.
This past month, all worry has been assuaged. And I feel like a fool for even worrying.
Creedence is now an insatiable book listener.
