Babies and books

[mistletoeandjuan]

DD is 6.5 months and recently friends with babies of a similar age have been telling me how much their babies like books and which is their favourite.

DD likes books in so much as she can put them in her mouth and if she's lucky and gets hold of a non board or fabric one she loves to rip scrunch the paper.

If I try to read her a book or show her the pictures she just grabs and tries to eat it

I was assuming that this was normal baby behaviour but all these comments are making me a bit paranoid - I need some reassurance please that these book eating tendencies won't stop her getting into Cambridge

well DS was exactly the same - books were just another object.
Likes reading now ar 2 1/2 & I've just bought him a load of bookss for Christmas.

Welcome to the joy that is competitive parenting

All of our board books have missing corners. DS3 ate them when he was around your dd's age!

He's now 2 and loves books and almost never takes a nibble!

Before my DS was even conceived I had lovely images of me reading him a bedtime story every night from birth.
Well, once he was born it became apparent that he didn't care at all. He liked listening to me sing (strange child) and he would often fall asleep while DH were talking to each other (possibly more sensible there) but showed no interest in being officially 'read' a story.
He became interested in books as a concept probably around the 6-7 month mark or so- ones like this went down well.

We started attempting bedtime stories again at about a year, but it wasn't until about 14 months that I managed to read him a whole story that he actually paid attention to and didn't just try to turn the pages before I'd read one word. (Hairy McClary IIRC).

Now he is 2 he loves stories and can follow the plot of a simple book.

In short, with my experience of one baby, yours is completely normal. Can't comment on the Cambridge thing though, although DS is of course a genius he is not quite that advanced.

should say DH and I.

There is a prof in my dh's department who eats the newsapers in the Senior Common Room, so in fact eating books may be a sign of Very Great Intelligence.

My ds is 8mo and he "likes" books in the same way your dd does and loves to eat them along with everything else other than his food (but that's a different thread!).

In the last few weeks he does seem to be paying a bit more attention to the pictures/textures in ones that we have (e.g that's not my monkey) but still generally prefers to eat/bash them! Your dd sounds absolutely normal ime!

I'd hazard a guess that your friends' babies probably "like" their books in exactly the same way and their "favourite" is the one they can get in their mouth the easiest

Your LO is completely normal!

My DTs are 19mo and have only just started looking at books and listening to stories. Before they just ate them like your LO.

Don't get drawn into all that competitive parenting, it is pathetic.

Hi,
Please don't worry aout your baby not liking books. It's the only time really ds stops is to listen to a book at night and he's 16 months. A favourite book is Toys I like, but it could be books I like to eat. I think I had the same fancy about reading books to baby, but I think he only liked stories when he was aout 7 months old.

Not just me then. I also had the romantic visions of reading her a story every night but she has other ideas

She likes songs (even with my terrible voice) and I do sometimes tell her a story while she's eating her breakfast so I don't think I'm stunting her development too much .

Apparently I used to march into my mum & dad's room at 5am demanding that they 'read book' so perhaps it's not a pastime I want to foster too much!

try some books with rhymes in them. sort of thing you can sing along to and quite simple words and you can make funny faces. they do start to love these by about 10mo.