‘Darling, We’ve Read That A Million Times…’

I always wonder why my Joey keeps fetching me the same old story book for me to read to her even though we’ve read it like a million times. Literally a million times. She’s got a whole library collection of different story books, but she will always choose the same few for us to read to her.

 

Today I got my answer from Babycentre’s email info. See here:

This "Read it again, Mummy" phase that preschoolers go through is perfectly normal. Children love the sense of power that comes from knowing what's on the printed page, and since they cannot read it for themselves, the next best thing is to memorize it. To do that they need to hear the story read over and over. Your preschooler decides for reasons known only to him which books are to be chewed and digested, and because he can't yet read for himself, you are delegated to read the them with diligence and attention. That means you can't skip a word of the text — and don't even think about turning several pages at once!
But the 200th reading of Green Eggs and Ham can make you a little crazy, particularly if you didn't care for the book the first time through. I always recommend choosing your favorites to read aloud. You never know when a book will zoom to the top of the charts and need to be read at least once or twice at every sitting. Read new titles aloud to your children daily, but always indulge their requests to reread old favorites.

It is no wonder, then, that Joey always wants the same story read to her again and again, again and again! Right after I finish reading the story, she’d then say, ‘Now I read to you!’, and I was always amazed at how she would tell the story almost exactly like the way I told it! Now I know it’s because she memorized it while I was reading it to her! Some vocabulary I used were probably words she heard for the first time, but she would still be able to use it, even though she couldn’t comprehend it fully yet. Amazing, isn’t it?

Still, I need God to give me more patience to tell the same story over and over again. Arghhh….