To not want to read really shit books to my baby?

[CooCooCaChu]

I've got an eight month old baby. We've got lots of really basic baby books. You know the kind, red circle on one page, blue triangle on the next. Or the endless 'that's not my ...'.

I find it incredibly boring to keep going 'oh look, this is a cow. Moooo.'

If I don't read these basic books, will she miss out on something important developmentally? Or can I skip straight to things with more of a narrative so I don't feel the need to stab myself in the eye just to create a bit of excitement?

Yabu you need to spend hours reading 'here is a car, brum brum'
Yanbu read something more fun, your baby will probably enjoy it more anyway

The really basic sturdy baby books do have a place. It’s worth having one or two so that when your baby wants to copy you and pick up a book, they can.

Theyre pretty indestructible with easy to turn cardboard pages and bold basic shapes and colours which babies can easily focus on.

Why do you need to spend hours doing it? One baby book a night takes less than 5 minutes, a bit of practice turning over pages, pointing and then chewing the book.

The Very Hungry Caterpillar is excellent. As are most of his other books. These types of books are really important for communication development.
Read anything you want as well. I read mine whatever I was reading while bf etc.

DS fav book at that age was the Gruffalo. He loved the pictures then as he got older he loved the story. Now he’s 3 he’s trying to figure out how to read it himself. So there’s nothing stopping you from getting normal books

God, this thread is bringing back memories. Fond recollection of a 2 year old DS 'reading' Supertato. "Boing into the cakes, boing into the cakes"

I'd recommend Where is the Green Sheep? Also all the Supertato books which are actually quite funny. And Funny Bones.

A is for Activist is my fave children's book.

OH No George - maybe cos I like dogs this has big clear pics. Probably not actually written for a small baby but older.

Really? How are old fashioned books a problem? DS can’t imagine a world without technology so the books are helpful in explaining how children lived back then.

I happily read all the Enid Blyton books to DS when he was little, Richmal Cromton’s Just William etc. and used the opportunity to talk about how society has changed over the years.

Enid Blyton books for example use some descriptions that are no longer acceptable.

For example “the brown boy” Isn’t George queer? A gay picnic and parents giving children a good spanking.

@ShinyShite there are some words we just don't use and that a pre-schooler is too young to fully grasp an explanation of

@ShinyShite
No point in looking at baby picture books with cabled phones, big box tellys, record players, etc
Book date more than you think.

I also came across a Biff & Chip book with the moral of the story being don't vandalise phone boxes - where would you even go to find a phone box??

I have also came across Enid Blyton books even the updated language versions just seem dated and a world away from what todays kids can relate to.

Maybe I’m romanticising Enid Blyton books too much, but I still think she was one of the greatest children’s story tellers.

Some of her books have aged better than others I suppose, and just aren’t relatable to children.

My dc all loved “The Magic Faraway Tree” although I must admit I probably loved reading it to them more 😂

My eldest absolutely lapped up 'That's Not My Puppy', 'That's Not My Truck', 'That's Not Your Parking Space' (ok, I made that one up) etc. His face recognising the pictures, his wee hand brushing across the different textures, and his bemused reaction to my ridiculous sing-songy inflection were all so enjoyable for me. DS2, however, was not on board with these books AT ALL. He stared at me as if I was some weird clown storyteller who had wandered in off the street to torture him. He had the same reaction when I tried to sing to him🤣 Each to their own ...

Anyway, many of the baby books were skipped as a result and he's still bright as a button. So no harm done.

About "old fashioned" books - something I used to do when my daughter was about 4 or 5 was look at when the book was written and try to figure out how old the child in the story would be now.
I think Alfie (from the Shirley Hughes books) is about my age (if he was an actual person) so I would say it's a story about a boy who was my age when I was a little girl. So something in the illustrations I could point out and say "ooh I had one like that" or "look the chair it's like the one at Granny's house".
Fascinating fact....My Naughty Little Sister is 'set' pretty much 100 years ago now !!
Fun way to introduce history.

Won’t someone spare a thought for all those adults wandering around at a total loss
because their parents never read one-words-a-page baby books to them, given that they’re apparently essential.

Those kids who never took up football because they couldn’t recognise a ball, or who flunked a job interview because they were told “just go through that green door” and their negligent, selfish mother never read the book that said “green” in it. It’s a scandal.

I loved Enid Blyton as a child and the books were almost as out of date then as they are now. I was a bit of a weird, socially awkward kid and I remember saying things like, "I say!" and "golly!" which of course were lifted straight from Enid Blyton and made me even weirder and ripe for piss taking by other children. I imagine it would be worse now with all the extra words we don't use these days.

That said, I do credit Enid Blyton with getting me into reading. I think it's because she wrote so many books, including so many series with characters I grew to know and love. Once I'd read one book from a series I wanted to read them all, which turned me into a really voracious reader and did wonders for my literacy.

I think the key is to find an author your child loves who has written a lot of books. But how many children's authors are as prolific as Enid Blyton?

OP stop worrying, honestly so much of this apparently essential stuff doesn't matter AT ALL! I never read to mine as it bored me shitless, they are now in 20s and very successful.

As a child I loved Enid Blyton the stories pulled you in made you want to keep reading - very like JKR. But many children today find them dated and unrelateable.

You don't have to read at all to an 8 month old.
Introduce books at 12 months or 18 months or 2. It's up to you. Nothing bad will happen, they're not going to fail their GCSEs.

Eh? So we shouldn’t read Peepo! with its gas mask and blackout warden? Let’s rule out Not Now Bernard because he’s got an old-fashioned TV not a flat screen. Farewell, Tiger Who Came to Tea because no one has a boy from the grocer anymore.

@bussteward I love Peppo so much. It shows that the daily life of a baby is pretty much the same whether it's 2023 or 1943.

Peepo not Peppo 🙂

My two year old is obsessed with Peepo and has to have it read to him every night before bed. He's learning English as his second language and a lot of his first vocabulary in English was from Peepo.

You can't really undervalue the role of repetition in language acquisition, boring as it is. Keep reading the books the dc is familiar with but add new ones that you find enjoyable too.

I read both. I leave the board books out so my DS can look at them whenever without breaking them. So we read them a lot and they’re great for basic vocabulary. But also have more children’s books with a story that I’ll read to stop myself going crazy.