I have been hearing about this book since its release, but shame on me for not reading it until now. It is my loss. Don’t let it be yours.

 Of Thee I Sing, a beautifully, joyfully illustrated book, will drop you to your knees. Each pair of pages proclaims a trait that Obama admires in his girls. “Have I told you that you are creative?” he declares on one page. And on the facing page there is a simple, elegant reference to a great American.  Paired with creativity, for example, is Georgia O’Keeffe. The writing is rich and stark, poetic and simply descriptive and delicious, and rolls off your tongue.  This book is educational and emotional, said this author who was in tears at its conclusion.

 Each of the Americans he portrays is someone about whom your children must know. Each has made a profound contribution to society as we know it today. And each embodies a quality we all want to cultivate in our children.

 As you must know, having read many of my blogs, I am a promoter of families and family life. It is the family that has the deepest and most lasting impact on children. And so I see the family meal (breakfast, lunch, or dinner) as being the ideal vehicle for presenting Of Thee I Sing. Each trait paired with  an American is perfect for starting a family discussion, regardless of the age of the people seated at the table. Everyone will be able to relate on his own level. 

I once learned that Joe Kennedy, or maybe it was Rose, used to bring an article from the Times to their dinner table each night for discussion among the Kennedy children. While that might be a “high fallutin’ ” approach, the idea is good one. It is through the banter of meal times that children absorb their parents’ beliefs and values. It is during family meal conversations, when each member has the floor, that children feel their opinions and ideas matter. 

 In the coming year, in addition to making family meals happen, why not make the most of them?  Let Of Thee I Sing be the icing on your cake.

 In the end it is the experiences that define the holidays. Do you remember what you received when you were 7 or 8 or 9?  Not likely. But you do remember what you always used to do with your family, year after year.  Experiences in the form of holiday traditions and rituals are family glue. Not only do they hold families together, but they stick long after the gifts have been broken or outgrown.  And the experiences of the holiday are what help to diffuse the dreaded gimmes.

 Experiences come in all forms:

•  Every year on Christmas Eve whole family bundles up in their p.j’s, jumps into the car, and combs the city for the best holiday lights.
•  One night of Chanukah each year is game night. The whole family plays Dreidel and other games,  the best part being everyone’s participation.
•  Every year before Christmas or on Chanukah every family member participates in making the family gift—chocolate covered pretzel sticks—to give to everyone on each family member’s gift list. Who knew Dad was such a good cook?
•  Every year at holiday time there is a movie night on which the family snuggles in the den, drinking cocoa with marshmallows, and watches The Miracle on 34^th Street.
•  Every year on Christmas Eve the whole family squeezes into Mom and Dad’s bed and listens to stories of when they were little at holiday time (or better, of the naughty things you used to do!)
•  Every Christmas or Chanukah one gift is hidden, and there is a treasure hunt to find it.  The hunt all over the house trumps the gift.
•  Every year each family beautifully wraps something of his that is ridiculous (a Barbie arm; a wheel from a broken truck) to give to each of the others.
•  Every year the family chooses Secret Elves for whom they will do surprise kindnesses, leaving only a note saying “from your Secret Elf.”

 You get the idea. These traditions of the holiday are very things that take the emphasis off the gifts and onto the real fun, the traditions, the family… the experiences that truly make the holidays special.

 And experiences make the best gifts of all, the ones that are remembered long after the Star Wars Battleship has come apart.  Your child will never forget when her gift from Grandma was going to theater to see The Lion King or when Uncle Jon took him fishing on the pier. Maybe the best gift was  a camp-out in the back yard with Daddy or taking knitting lessons with Mom.  While the gifts you bought may have sparkled under the tree, they are not necessarily the ones that have the greatest impact, the deepest meaning, but they are the longest remembered.

Experiences speak to children in ways that gifts just can’t.  They are interactive. They nurture a child because it is through hands on, active experience that children evolve and grow the most. Experiences are time-released: they are absorbed over time and recalled over and over. They live on in our minds and in our hearts, never to be forgotten.  Experiences are about people, and they cement relationships. Nothing lasts as long as a relationship.  Experiences stick. They are the gifts that keep on giving.

 Experiences of all kinds, whether as gifts or as traditions, are the antidotes to the holiday gimmes.   If you haven’t started out this way, it’s not too late. Traditions can begin at any time. Your children will absorb your enthusiasm and excitement. And next year  they’ll be the ones looking forward to the experience of the holidays.

Why on earth does anyone want her toddler (or infant) to read?

Then I saw in the newspaper today that Docia Zavitkovsky had died.  Docia, a matriarch in our field, dedicated her entire 96 year life to young children, to raising consciousness about the importance of our children’s early years as the foundation for a rich and satisfying life. She was the founding mother of Play Matters, a nonprofit organization that places play at the heart of early childhood. What would Docia have said about this advertisement? I shudder to think.

I am not sure which part of the radio advertisement bothers me the most…that parents are pushing their children in the exact wrong direction? That parents are so competitive in today’s world that they are taking desperate measures to give their children a perceived advantage that can actually be a disadvantage?  That merchants and advertisers are taking advantage of naive parents, making money off of them? It all bothers me.

It reminds me of Baby Einstein. The inventor made a fortune off of all those parents who were convinced that pouring images into their infants and toddlers via a screen would actually make them smart. Have you all thrown out those DVD’s yet…or better, asked for a refund?

How do you grow a child?  Our very youngest children are nourished by interacting with people and with their environment. They learn and grow by feeding the right hemisphere of their brains with sensory and emotional and social experiences, through interacting with all that they encounter in their world. Learning in the early months and years of life is about play, exploration, trial and error.  It is priming the pump, laying the foundation for learning to read and other left brain experiences at the right time, and that is much later. How interesting it is that you can teach a toddler to recognize a word by repeated (boring) exposures to that word, over and over and over. But show him that word when he is six years old, and he’ll have in a minute or two.  And to top it off, he’ll even know what the word means!

Would it be too evil of me to cross my fingers that Baby Can Read is a total flop? I pray, for Docia’s sake, that not one more DVD is sold.

Pretty much all children start out loving books. Young children display their love of books in all kinds of ways: piling them high to make towers; pulling them off the shelf; carrying them around in a wheel barrow; organizing them according to size, color, shape; turning the pages, or just chewing on them! All of these are early ways of experiencing books.

Most children love books because they are accompanied by a cozy, close time with Mommy or Daddy and their full attention. What could be better!

But forcing a child to sit still and read a book when he isn’t ready, or doggedly trying to get a child to recognize letters, recite their sounds are sure fire ways of turning a child off to reading. If reading becomes a chore, your child won’t hurry to do it, anymore than he hurries to brush his teeth.

I can promise you that your child will learn to read, each in his own time, when he is ready. And if reading is a part of your everyday life, if books are part of your world, if your child sees how your love to read and love your books, so will he…someday.

Here are some tips for encouraging a love of books and reading.

•Be a role model for reading. Let your child see you reading. Choose to read as an activity when you have an extra ten minutes (Hah!) Talk about what you have read, sharing your enthusiasm. He will learn that reading is an enjoyable activity that you treasure.

•Read as a family. Even after your children can read on their own, they’re still likely to enjoy it when you read aloud to them. Pick a chapter book (for children four and older) and make it a ritual to read it with them. Let your older child participate in the reading.

Or, have a family reading time where everyone sits together in the family room or in the garden on a lovely morning …and reads! Take turns talking about what you are reading. Share paragraphs, sentences, descriptions, words.

•Talk about books. Let your child overhear you telling your friends, your husband, your mother on the phone about the book you are reading. Let him hear how much you are enjoying it.

•Bring a book wherever you go. Let your child catch you reading…as you wait in the carpool line, as you wait for her to come out of her dentist appointment, as she plays in your yard. Make reading a treat that you allow yourself whenever you can squeeze in some time.

•Create a home library in a special place. Make that library accessible to even the youngest child and model how we treat books with such care. For the young, non readers provide picture books, books with texture, and very primary books with simple words. For older children, stock the library with a variety of reading materials: “old friend” picture books, resource books, story books, joke books, riddle books, fiction, non fiction, art books, even comic books.

•Visit the library. Even in this day of the internet, the library is still a great resource for books of all kinds. You can borrow ten books at a time. Wow! Children don’t need to own their books, and using the library teaches them to share, to be responsible, and to use different skills than does Google.

•Unplug the TV! The television (and other such screens) has become an invasive influence in our homes. Too often it is to the detriment of our children’s recreational reading. If TV isn’t a choice, then reading just might be!

•Use reading as a special reward. Read an extra book or story when your child has done something worthy of a reward or praise.