Morning books

My oldest was not yet three on the night that I checked on him in his sleep and found 16 books stacked by his pillow. "What is this?" I asked my husband, who had put him to bed that night.

"He said it was his 'morning books,'" Jim said. "I thought it was something you had started with him."

No, it was something he came up with all on his own. The sad thing about the nighttime reading ritual is that it eventually has to end. For a boy who loves books the best way to deal with the disappointment is to think about all that you will read the next day. Sixteen of them tomorrow morning!

My son is almost five now, but morning books are still part of our family lexicon. There are moments, like this one, when he comes running into our dark room beating the sunrise by a good hour, his arms full of favorite stories. "It's time for morning books!" he says.

There's a baby in our house and so there are nights that I am up multiple times for feedings or fevers. On those mornings, I'm so sleepy I must struggle not to fall asleep mid-sentence. Sylvester McMonkey McZZZZZ.

This is insane, I think. It's not even light out.

But I struggle onward because I want my child to be the sort of kid who wakes up early to read and if that means I have to get up a little early to read to him, well so be it.

After all, that's what they invited coffee for!

Teaching a child to love books

We do a lot of things wrong at our house, but this is one thing that's going well so far. Our sons are learning that books are valuable tools, and great fun besides.

The secret?

We've made a point of showing them how we use books everyday. It mostly amounts to thinking out loud. "I think I'm going to look in this cookbook to see how long I should cook the chicken tonight," I might say. Or" I think I need to check the baby book to find the best way to take the baby's temperature."

Of course, this means you have to use a book for those things, rather than Google. But even turnign to the computer counts, if you point out to the child that you're reading the answers. I don't mean giving them a lecture about "this is the importance of reading." I mean simply saying: "I don't know why Mars is red. Let's go read about it on the computer!"