Reading aloud

Here's a short article in the Telegraph about the return of a BBC children's show. The author talks about reading aloud to children:

Yet as soon as children are old enough to read, they tend to be left to their own devices. But a story shared by being read aloud is a different experience from a story read in your head. Older children should not be deprived of it and it is vital that parents continue to read to their children long after they can read for themselves.

All the early childhood experts I've been reading mention that you can't start reading to your children too early or too often. What many of these books fail to mention is that you can't read to them for too long, either. People tell me that their parents read to them until they could read to themselves and then that was pretty much it. You've heard of attachment parenting -- I think my mom practiced attachment literacy, and it worked. She continued reading aloud to us pretty much through most of grade school. My brother and I still read plenty on our own, probably much more so than if our mother wasn't also reading to us. Both literary, they were vastly different experiences.

Years ago I read a few studies regarding that another indicator of raising successful and joyous readers is reading oneself. Kids are mimics, if they see their parents reading, then they will read. (If they see their parents watching day time TV and endless sitcoms, then that's what they'll do. It's not nuclear physics. Just telling your kid to read isn't going to make them read.) It's like the Suzuki method -- my jazz teacher said it is successful not because of any inherent pedagogical superiority but because it is leveraging the parent's love through mimicry. Monkey see, monkey do.

Last night we watched The Life Aquatic of Steve Zissou. (I thought it was terribly flat. The director was trying for deadpan, I think, but any emotionally or intellectually compelling content got lost in his attempts for quirky details. Ah, film making in the age of irony.) Cate Blanchett's character was reading to her baby in utero. Yes, it was supposed to be another of Wes Anderson's quietly zany touches (failed!) but I couldn't help thinking, "Should I have been reading Shakespeare to my fetus? Have I missed an opportunity?" Even though the baby can hear my voice, I think that's going overboard -- although I do like reading Shakespeare out loud. (I'm saving some gory bits of Titus Andronicus for for story time.) I do like Eli to talk to my tummy every day so the baby will be familiar with his voice. I also got paranoid a few months ago, after someone with no concept of a steady beat davened Musaf, that my child might have no sense of rhythm so I have obsessively used the metronome whenever I've practiced. Folic acid to prevent birth defects? Check. Calcium for strong bones? Check. Metronome to prevent an overly white child? Check.