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The Crazy Thing About Babies

Meg reading a board book to our daughter Minna, who is sitting in her lap

This is lovely:

man the crazy thing about babies is that like, some people would think that reading a baby a book about farm animals is teaching them about farm animals, but really it’s teaching them about the concept of a book and how there’s new information on each page of a single object, but really, beyond that, it’s teaching them how language works, and beyond that it’s really actually teaching them about human interaction, and really really it’s them learning about existing in a three-dimensional space and how they can navigate that space, but actually, above all it is teaching them that mama loves them.

Comments  4

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CW Moss

I love these posts that are essentially a thought about thinking.

Amanda D

When my kid was born, the pediatrician gave us Baby Days, Baby Reads at his first visit. I was fascinated because it was explicitly, overtly meta: a book (four pages, each featuring a picture of a baby) to read to a baby to teach the baby what reading is

Gregor Gilliom

My boys are 22 and 24 and we read to them a lot and this hit me right in the feels and now I'm crying.

Laura R

It also teaches kids about time. In our house, my kids would use familiar books to estimate how long something was going to take. "How many Curious Georges before our food is ready?" Nowadays, we're more likely to measure time in REAMDEs. *sniffle*

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