I want to start reading to 6 month old

[NeedAHoliday123]

My LO is 6 1/2 months old and although we have lots of books and I've tried reading to him several times he's never very interested and just gets distracted! Therefore we rarely do actually sit down with him to read as he'd rather play.

At what age did you start reading to your LO and how did you start putting it in your evening routine?

I look at picture books with my 8 month old so not so much reading but talking about the pictures of animals etc. Often these books have different textures, push button noises, mirrors and things on the pages to draw in attention. Could you use something like that?

From day one. They won't pay much attention initially. I find that now at 18 month my daughter enjoys it more. But I have been reading to her every bedtime from the beginning.

You just do it anyway even if you're not paying much attention so they get used to it. My boys have both not been interested at first but now they love books. My 2.5 year old asks for books multiple times a day and spends a lot of time reading or being read to, and my 1 year old has just recently become interested in books and hands them to me to read them to him. The books that I found they were interested in from the earliest age were books with real photos of babies in them. After that, they liked felt flap books like 'Where's Mr Dog', followed by normal flap books like 'Dear Zoo'. Then they liked the 'That's Not My' books. My 1 year old is currently obsessed with a little farm book with pictures (proper photos) of animals in it and likes me to read the animals and do the boosee on every page. Don't worry too much about the baby not being that interested at the moment, but make sure that there are books around and read to him little and often. He'll show interest in time.

I’ve been reading to my daughter since I was pregnant. She sometimes listens during the day and sometimes doesn’t I read to her anyway.
In the evening she always has wow said the owl which is her favourite book and she laughs at the ‘wow’ pages. And before bed she has spot says goodnight those are the two we do every day and then during the day I’ll read 1/2 different short ones while she plays. She’s 9mo.

Since they were born! A tip I followed was to have baby facing you (I used to either lie/sit on the sofa with them on my lap facing me). They can then see your face aswell as the book and watch your mouth, expression etc.

I can't actually remember with my first, quite early on introduced books. It became worth my while around 14 months. My second, I've been bad as I only read a book to him every other day. He doesn't really sit still and concentrate as much as the other one. He's starting to show more of an interest though. He's 16 months old. He likes the ones with the touchy feely bits in and I always found finger puppet books, lift the flap books or pop up books caught their interest initially.

Thanks all! I have been trying to start reading a book a day during the day to him - although he's more interested in eating them 🙄

Honestly, I think I read a few and gave up at 6 months. My 3.5 year old decided he wanted to go to the library instead of the park today though. You don't have to force it, they will get interested when they're ready

I also found baby wasn't interested at a very early age so it was really difficult to stay motivated to read to her. I felt pressured to read every day from day dot and felt guilty if I didn't. Now I think it's absolutely fine to wait until a few months old and you can really see them take an interest. Don't worry about reading daily just keep trying every so often until you see that they're responding.

When I say a few months it's however many months your baby starts to enjoy books. Until then they be are learning from so many other daily activities.

I started reading from day 1 but it’s only now at 8 months that my little one is interested . He loves anything with a texture to feel , a button to press or a flap to lift.

From about 2/3 months - I used to read to him in his bouncer before he could object At around maybe 6 months he became quite interested in lift the flap books and ones he could touch eg the That's Not My... books.

He's 19 months now and That's Not My... books are still a hit, but now he likes finding the mice on each page and pointing to the lion/duck/car whatever and making the animal noise. His favourite book is the DK My First Words book which he got for his first birthday. It has lots of pictures of familiar objects, animals, body parts etc and he gets to practice pointing at them and naming them and so on. He can't really concentrate on story books with more than about 2 sentences per page.

So he is still not exactly into great literature but hopefully it's all a good foundation.

@89redballoons love those big first words books. We got a priddy book of something similar. They love pointing at them don't they. We got lots of use out of ours as they satrt pointing at a few things and gradually learn them all