As a mother I wake up every morning and think to myself “How can I do better”. Everyday I try to be a better mother; more patient, more understanding, more loving, more engaged…just “more”. A lot of the time I fail. Miserably! I will put Greyson to bed for the night and I feel guilty. I’ve yelled too much today, Greyson had more screen time than he should have. Did I even offer him a vegetable to eat?
Sometimes I feel like there is such a fine line between me being a good mom and a lousy one…
Today I am going to talk about just one little area that I want to improve upon when it comes to Greyson. We all know the importance of reading to our children, and making sure they are surrounded by books.
We read to Greyson every day. He is guaranteed books at nap-time and bedtime. We usually read a couple of books throughout the day, but I am pledging to read more! It is so important!
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There are so many reasons to read to your child. These only scratch the surface:
- Bonding
- Vocabulary Growth
- Language Development
- Improved Communication Skills
- Enhanced concentration and Discipline
- Improved Logical Thinking Skills
- …and so many more
Despite knowing the importance of reading it can be really hard to find the time to make sure you get in at least 20 minutes of reading everyday. Here are some places you may not have thought of before:
- Bath-time! Greyson loves it when I read him a couple of books when he is taking a bath. Just make sure you sit a ways back to make sure your books don’t get soaked with bath water. 🙂
- In the car. We travel a lot to see family. I always have my 31-tote stocked with activities and at least 5 books for Greyson.
- Restaurant- More and more often I see families out to dinner and the parents are on their phones while the kids are either trying to get their attention or drawing on their place-mats solo. Take this time to really be with your kids! If you do not want to draw with them (One of Scott and Greyson’s favorite waiting at the restaurant activities) – pull a book that you’ve stashed in your bag and read. Trust me – this is better than anything you could be doing on your phone.
- And of course before nap-time and bed-time!
So in honor of my latest mommy challenge: to read more to my child, I am going to be sharing more book collections! Themed books, our favorites, beginner chapter books, new baby books, etc.
So please tell me, what is your child’s favorite book?? Right now Greyson is obsessed with Would you rather be a bullfrog by Dr. Seuss. He gets on kicks where he will ask for the same book over and over again. After a week or two (pretty much once he can recite it himself) he will move on to a new book obsession! Before this one it was Pout Pout Fish!
And remember:
[…] week I wrote about how important it is to read to our children for AT LEAST 20 minutes a day. I shared this little graphic that explains how reading can have a dramatic effect on our […]