I can’t believe Bebe will be 18 months old soon – he is going to be A YEAR AND A HALF!

I’ve been trying to cut back my work hours during the day. These days I may work 2 hours during the day, and then cram another hour or so during Bebe’s nap. The rest of whatever “work” I’d do, was done once Bebe goes to bed. Honestly, though, I haven’t been able to get too much work done once Bebe goes to bed, because I would feel mentally tired from the day. The last thing I felt like doing was work. As a result, I’ve been watching more TV these days than ever before.

I’ve been putting Bebe to bed almost every evening. Luckily for me, Bebe usually falls asleep at around 8pm, sometimes even before. Our bedtime ritual isn’t the stuff of “baby Einstein”… we’d watch Jeopardy and then The Simpsons on the bed while Bebe drinks from his bottle and plays peekaboo on the bed. At this point, I seriously believe it is more important for me to talk with Bebe than “read” to him.

He does have 3 books that he likes to have “read” to him, but he is very particular about who reads what. He’d take the book about baby’s first toys to my mom, who will point and tell him what the pictures are in English if she knows them, or in Chinese if she doesn’t. She’ll sing the theme song from a childhood robot cartoon that my brother and I used to love and watch, and Bebe will happily stamp his feet at the tune. To me, Bebe brings “Move it! Farm” and “Animals of Lakes and Rivers”. He recognizes which book to bring when I say the title, but he may soon forget about “Move it! Farm” since I’d confiscated it before he destroys the entire book.

This is a big board book with pull out parts, and the first thing that Bebe pulled out was the “lift” in the barn that slid up and down the page. After he pulled that part of the book out, he began to peel the picture from the page itself. Then he discovered a lever in the book that would pop the puppy into the picture. He would pull that lever as hard as he could because he wanted to pull the entire thing out.

The other day when we went to Mommy&Me class, the (substitute) teacher asked how many of us read to our babies every day. Half of the mommies in the room raised their hands, I didn’t, because I don’t “read” to Bebe everyday. Honestly, I didn’t feel bad about that, either. This is because the teacher then said that studies have shown that babies are more intelligent or learn faster when their parents talk with them every day. I talk to Bebe quite a bit, though I can do better with regular words instead of complex sentences or gibberish (I know, I am a woman of extremes). The teacher recommends us to practice verbal diarrhea, where we do a running oral commentary on every thing we are doing every day to help our babies learn.

My question is, what’s the deal with asking us about reading to our babies and then talking about studies that had nothing to do with reading, but rather, relates to verbal communication with our babies?

I am looking forward to the day when I can actually “read” to Bebe, when he is less interested in either tearing the book apart of eating the book and more interested in listening or looking at the pictures. If you subscribe to Rudolf Steiner’s theories of childhood education (upon which the Waldorf method is based), you’d not be surprised why he recommends holding off the reading until the child is quite old (7!) and instead, develop the artistic and creative skills in the child. I wouldn’t wait that long for Bebe, though.