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The group of babies should be sitting in their mommies’ laps. The event is called a “lap-sit,” after all. But for some of the newborn to 2-year-olds, the chance of them sitting still isn’t high.
One baby crawls toward the door, managing to open it. Another is after the bottle of bubbles Miss Jen is trying to hide behind her. The baby is intent on sucking the bottom of the bottle.
Miss Jen is Jen Tonsing, the youth services librarian at the Limberlost Public Library in Rome City. She also leads the library’s “Baby and Me Lap-Sit” – a 30-minute reading time for babies and toddlers.
Only about five minutes of that half-hour is devoted to reading. Babies have wildly short attention spans, but reading to them is beneficial on so many levels, Tonsing says.
“Children need to be exposed to print and be exposed to everyday language at an early age,” she says. “The sooner parents start reading to them, (the sooner) they will gain increased vocabulary, reading skills, listening skills, language skills.”
KidsHeath.org, a Web site on children’s development, mirrors Tonsing’s ideas about reading to tots. By their first birthdays, children have learned all the sounds needed to talk, and the more parents read to their children, the more vocabulary the children are exposed to, according to the site.
To instill this vocabulary, Tonsing stresses repetition during story time. She will, for instance, say the word “ball” and point to a picture of one. By doing this repeatedly, children who might not even be talking yet will start to associate the word “ball” with the image of one.
A baby’s mind is constantly absorbing information, and in some cases, Tonsing says, a child will utter his or her first words at a lap-sit.
“It’s exciting,” she says. “A lot of the quiet ones (will start) to come out and talk.”
Even with quieter babies, Tonsing notices that they are paying attention and picking up on what she reads. She can watch a child’s facial expression or follow his eye movement and know he’s absorbing what’s going on.
Tonsing starts her program with a welcome song. The moms – four on this Thursday morning – sing along, clapping their babies’ hands in time with the music. Tonsing then engages the babies, rolling a ball to each one. They are alert, paying attention. The group sings another song before she starts to read from a book.
As Tonsing goes through the pages, she shows the book closely to each child, engaging each in the pictures and words.
Terina Abel of Kendallville has taken her son, Braxton, to the lap-sit since he was 4 months old; he’s 1 now. Braxton loves books, Abel says, and he loves to be read to.
Stephanie Frye of Kendallville sees other value in the lap-sits – it gets her and her 17-month-old twin daughters, Addison and Kara, out of the house and interacting with other moms and children. She wants to teach them to sit and pay attention, and Frye says the lap-sits help her achieve this.
When reading to very young children, the books don’t necessarily need words, says Clare Christian, a children’s librarian at the Allen County Public Library. The reader can make a story up as he goes, even inserting the child into the story.
When a baby becomes a toddler, however, he can start to pick up on alphabet knowledge simply by learning the shapes of the letters, she says.
However, at its heart, reading to children is spending time with them, and it’s letting them know that text actually says something, which means that even if Mom pulls out her Glamour magazine and starts reading about five hot new nail colors, Baby can still benefit.
“And that’s another early literacy skill: to realize that the text does mean something and the letters do have purpose,” Christian says. “It’s not just pictures.”
