When did you start reading books to your LO?
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When he was pretty young... Maybe 2 months? We read every day and he loves books now (almost 10 months). He has favorites that he'll pick out and he sits on our laps to read and turns the pages!
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We also started at two months. She is 7 months now and loves turning pages. She particularly likes colorful illustrations, so we read lots of Eric Carle along with an Elmo book. She clearly doesn't understand storyline yet, but its good for their development to hear written language read aloud and also just how to orient a book!
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As a newborn...it became part of our bedtime routine around 6 weeks.
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Pretty young, at around 2 months.
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It was early...within the first month.
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Pretty much since birth.
He's reading to me, now.
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With Lala we started at birth. M was much less interested, but at 17 months she's finally sitting through a whole book.
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I started right away but a bit sporadically. We read most days now and he usually likes it. I stop as soon as he gets fussy so it stays a positive experience.
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Since birth
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We tried right away but she didn't like you to sit down while holding her so she just screamed the whole time and it really wasn't enjoyable. We have started up again now, at 3 months. She tolerates it a lot better now!
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We started reading to her occasionally last week, at 2weeks. She's not too interested, but I think it's fun
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I started reading her the same book at about two weeks old. She's finally starting to focus on objects so I think I'll add some different books in.
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Here and there starting at birth. Now I read to her everyday at 2 months.
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Reading books is DH's father/son time.
I can't believe he's already read Treasure Island! (Of course, E sleeps through most of it.)
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We started the day she came home. I read to her every morning and she and my husband have storytime in the evening. I wanted to make it part of her routine ASAP.
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From birth, but I have to caveat that because I did not always read him children's books. He often got to listen to the newspaper/professional journals (fun!)/books I wanted to read in the early days/months. I figured I had a completely captive audience, so I could read whatever I wanted and I feel like it's the exposure to words and grammatical patterns that matters at that point, not so much the stories or the context. I usually read to him during feedings then. Now we're a lot more regimented about reading time and it happens mostly before nap and before bed.
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For real reading when he was interested was around 7-8 months. I tried to read more often when he was younger than that but it just didn't work out. But he LOVES to read stories and could easily sit through 2-3 in the 7-8 month range and now he will sit through maybe 5-6 books before I get tired of reading! It's definitely one of my favorite things to do with DS.
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We have been trying since 2 months but most nights she cries and wants to get to nursing
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We read often when DD was a baby, but we didn't get it into her regular routine until 1 year. When we stopped giving her a bedtime bottle, we replaced that with story time. Now she absolutely loves her books, and she's starting to have more attention span to sit through reading multiple stories.
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We've been doing it since we started a bedtime routine in the first month or so. But like @honeybear: it wasn't (and still isn't) always children's books. We have some awesome vintage story-telling books with stories like the Snow Queen and I've read him Percy Jackson and my husband's read him chapters from his textbooks.
He started being interested in board books around the time he could fit with support - 5 or 6 months I think. He's 10 months now and will sit through a book, although he really just likes turning the pages.
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It took until a year for him to have the patience to sit through a whole board book. I had raging mommy guilt about it, but before a year books were torture for all of us, so we quit for a while
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@Mrs. Polish: In utero. I'm a librarian so I know how important it is to start daily reading early. At 13 mo we probably read 10 books a day.
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@Smurfette: we Also had this issue until we switched it so I nurse and then he reads his bedtime book with daddy.
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@Smurfette: same! I read while he stretches and roots and screeches at me haha
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Since he was in utero. This is a really awesome book that celebrates reading aloud from day 1 & gives anecdotal and study based support for it- it was a fun read that got me pumped up about reading to LO http://www.amazon.com/The-Read-Aloud-Handbook-Sixth-Edition/dp/0143037390
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@hilsy85: right now we nurse and then she goes right into the crib cause she is half asleep after nursing. What do you do? Plus my DH travels during the week so it is just me doing bedtime Mon-Fri:(
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@Smurfette: ah gotcha...we do a bath, I nurse, and then top him off with a bottle of pumped milk--he's not a huge fan of the bottle so it usually wakes him up a bit, but if he's still basically sleeping, I'll burp him and that will wake him up. If he's cranky from that I'll give him a paci while he is read to, and then bed. When we did it the other way he usually cried through the whole story and it was just sad for everyone!
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@Smurfette: We do nurse, then switch for books with dad. But for a while we were doing nurse, bath, then books because I didn't want to nurse to sleep. Major fail in the long run
Maybe you could do book, then bath, then nurse?
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From birth, but not a ton until she got interested at about 4 months. But they were always around, and she took to them very early.
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From birth. Now (at 10 months) we can only really read board/indestructible books because LO will lunge for and rip pages out of regular books. I can't wait to get back to real books!
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I would start from birth.
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In utero. I'm a HUGE reader, and really hope that LO picks up my love of books (even if its still a little early).
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While she was in my belly! She's interested in them, but she tries to rip everything out of my hands and eat it these days.
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I started right away but she wouldn't sit through a whole book until about 2.5 mos. Now at a little over 5 mos, she loves when we read to her. I usually grab a new stack every few days and bring them out to where we sit to nurse. I'll read her a few a day but then I re-read them for the next few days. I feel like she enjoys them more the 2nd or 3rd time around. She especially likes the mirror books and ones where they have different textures to touch. My favorite are the mirror ones because I can see her reactions!
Confession: I do a quick read through of all the books first so I can do a good performance and be prepared for any character voices I could do, etc lol.
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Before she was born. Ellie loves books (I read to her before birth as well) so Lorelei has heard all of big sister's books for the last however long. Now at 16 months I read books just to her, she gets her own crop of library books just like all the other household members, and she also gets to listen to one of Ellie's chapter books or longer books when we do bath in the evenings. Ellie gets at least an hour of read-aloud time a day (which she really loves).
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@hilsy85: I am afraid if I read after nursing, it would really wake her up and she wouldn't go to sleep as easily. We nurse with just a small light on but it wouldn't be enough to read.
@mewtill: I will have to try that! -
I guess maybe around 4-5 months. We don't have a real bedtime routine so we just read whenever. She's almost 10 months and loves reading. She gets super excited when we say "read a book". Her daddy taught her how to turn pages. It's so adorable!
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In the first month, because I enjoyed doing it and because it gave DW time to do other things (or often, nothing at all, which is even better!). Not sure LO got all that much out of it.
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