15mo obsessed with books

[ellesabe]

Dd has always shown an interest in books and up until a week ago she would happily sit for ages looking through her books by herself. However she has recently cottoned onto the joy that is having her books read to her by someone else.

Whilst I LOVE that she likes books so much and I LOVE reading them to her, I cannot do this every minute of the day and she's starting to become a bit of a menace. She will go and point to the bookshelf on her bedroom wall yelling 'bok bok' or take books out of her toy box and bring them to me when I'm cooking/washing up and then have a massive tantrum if I don't stop and read to her.

Obviously she is too young to be reasoned with so I try to distract her with something else but 5 mins later she finds another book! I suppose I could remove all of the books that are within her reach but I don't want to deprive her of them, especially as she enjoys them so much.

Any advice? If I have to read Peepo one more time I'm going to go insane!

She's not too young to understand sequences, so how about "Mummy will read you Peepo when she's finished the washing up. Washing up THEN Peepo." You'll have to say it several times, though, and expect to be held to your promise!

My dd is 19 months now and was exactly the same from about 12 months. We cruelly resorted to having to remove all books from sight and storing in cupboards for the exact reasons you describe.

Then at regular intervals during the day I would bring a selection of books out to read on the sofa before returning to the hiding place.

I felt awful as obviously it's such a joy to have a child so interested in books but she would get very angry and frustrated if we could read with her whenever she demanded.

Anyway... By Xmas she was 17 months and was brought 5 or 6 new books and to test the water we decided to keep these on her toy shelves in reach and not hide them. She is now nowhere near as demanding with them and recognises that mummy and daddy will only read to her if they are already sat down on the sofa. So a few months of restriction seemed to work wonders and we have recently brought the rest of the books out.

I think in our case dd just needed to learn the fact that mummy would only read on the sofa and that no amount of following me round while I'm hoovering would make me stop and read!

We now have a new obsession here though.... Puzzles.

It's a stage, and one DS went through with a vengeance. We did the "Mummy finish job, THEN read book" thing and it worked. I understand your frustration though!

Thanks everyone! I will try the sequence thing and will save hiding them for if all else fails!

Ohh I love a bit of Eric Carle Jnr in the.shower

I did the sequencing thing to, but I also had/have a selection of book which have cd with them and would use them if necessary. So I could finish whatever while dd2 & DS will be listening to someone reading the book while they 'read' looked at the book.

Ooh I could've written your OP! DS is 16 months old and exactly the same at the moment. Peepo is also a firm favourite with him. I'm also trying the sequencing thing and avoiding saying things like 'in a minute' because that's meaningless to him. I also rotate books round quite a bit when I he gets a bit bored of them. Keeps it a bit more interesting but we have the advantage of the books all being on shelves that are out of his reach.

Oh, and if you know it off by heart you can often get them to turn the pages so you can recite it while continuing with what you were doing...

Good point Octavia but DS got wise to that and would get most upset if he caught me Not Looking At The Page.

Ah at times I can't even read the book properly resulting in it being thrown across the room with an accompanying howl of indignation (from him, not me).

Ha ha ha, I can definitely relate to this!

Being able to recite books off by heart has been very useful at times - when we're on a car journey or I'm in the shower.

I often do the sequence "the other way round":
"After Peepo, then Mummy must go and do her face. Peepo, then Mummy do face, okay DD?"
And then back the other way...
"Mummy do face, then Little Princess. Little Princess AFTER Mummy's done her face."
"Just one more story, then night night."
etc.

My almost 14 mo DD is exactly the same, she has different books she prefers for different people, for me it's the 'are you my Mummy?' books from asda, they drive me insane but she loves them and I always get a cuddle at the end because when the animal finds it's mummy, mummy gives it a great big cuddle and my DD always goes 'ahhhh' and gives me a snuggle, but it can still be wearing.

For her Nanny she has a book called 'Peas', it's really a picture book that has lots of things she can point to and say the words and it happens to have a picture of some peas in there somewhere so my Mum walks in and DD picks it up going 'Nanny Peas, Nanny peas'. And for my dad it's a Disney princess book DD calls Lella (cinderella) and DH gets the hungry Caterpillar.

It's our own fault for encouraging her to look at books from an early age but it's a really good thing and we think it has helped her loads and encouraged her to say lots of words. It does get in the way of us doing things we need to do tho so we try to take it in turns to give us a break.