John is being so sweet to Mary lately, showering her with kisses, telling me that she needs help if she's crying, and generally being precious. Of course, this morning before we left for errands was the first time ever that John has asked me if we could leave Mary at home. He showed me just where I could put her so she would be safe (in her swing), in case I didn't understand his gist.
Aww...very sweet :-)
ReplyDeletewhen did you start giving John access to real books (meaning not just board books). I am afraid Ben will rip/eat the pages at this age. Any advice? Right now all of his story books are upstairs and basically unused. He has his boardbooks in the living room and that is what we read, but they leave a bit to be desired when it comes to the reading aloud LOL.
ReplyDeleteJamie,
ReplyDeleteLet's see . . . I can't remember exactly when I allowed John access to "real" books. I know that when we moved into the temporary apartment, he was 16 months old and I definitely had paper books mixed in with the board books on the lowest shelf in the living room, so he had free access.
John did and does tear pages. Usually, he would tear them unintentionally because he didn't have finesse with his hands. I still prefer books of higher production quality because the thicker paper doesn't tear so easily.
When John tears a page, I fix the book quickly, often in front of him with his involvement. I talk about how we don't tear books, now the book has an ouchie, we have to fix it with tape. By this age, he really understands that when books are torn, that is a bad thing.
Sometimes John tears a page on purpose. Then he is disciplined for being destructive. Usually I take away the book and don't give it back soon, which makes him sad.
I still segretate inexpensive paper books and keepsake paper books. He has shelves in his room and the very nice paper books are kept high so that only a parent can access them.
My other thought is that we mamas will only get this much control introducing paper books with the first baby. With all the subsequent babies, I assume that they will have access to paper books from the time they can crawl. John has free access to his books in the living room and bed room all day and he dumps them all on the floor every single day. He loves reading and scatters the books throughout the house. I expect many more torn books from Mary because of that!
Thanks for the advice Katherine..and excellent point about later babies. Ben does the same with the books...they are dumped and scattered...and don't even DARE to clean them up in his presence LOL...
ReplyDeleteI guess I will start integrating some paper books and see how he does. We just scored a heap of books from the library discard pile...so I will start there :)
Aww, so cute! I have a photo of Miriam reading to Jireh when they were similar ages.
ReplyDeleteBooks. Ugh. There is no way that I have found to keep them in good condition other than just not letting anyone have access to them, ever, which is ok for a couple of keepsake/old books but not ok for the type of homeschooling I am doing. So, we have a lot of ruined books. I wish there were a magic solution. If you come up with one please let me know.
I'm thrilled if we can return all our library books without my having had to tape one!