Read Aloud Blues

Once upon a time, a mother sat down to read a book to her four month old baby. Twenty years later, she still reads the same book to another four month old. No, not her grandchild. Her own. And in between those two times wer an infinite number of other times just like them, stretching all the way between like an intricate web of words and learning.
Quiz: What’s the single most important factor in a child’s reading ability and therefore, his success in school? Yup! You guessed it. Parents who read aloud to their kids give them a huge head start on all language and reading skills which are often never surpassed by any other learning exercise. As the mother of thirteen who just today celebrated 20 years of parenting with the birthday of my eldest child, I had an epiphany:
Reading aloud to my children has irrevocably damaged my brain.
Sure, I began reading when they were babies and all of my children were early talkers and readers. But this scary thought occurred to me tonight as I was blithely rhyming my way through Apple Pigs which I couldn’t really see due to the three children on my lap and one leaning over the side of the rocker. Ezra kept pointing out his favorite parts of the book over and over again so it sounded like “Once in our garden there stood an old tree (quiwo! quiwo!- which is squirrel in two year old in case you were wondering.) No blossoms, no leaves, no fruit for me,” (birdie! birdie!). As I pressed on, my thought was, “He’ll get through this stage. I remember Jerusha was a big one for doing that when she was a little over a year. Every day we would read the little book about the Bible, and she would point out the kitty on every page. I used to wonder if she would think the Bible was about kitties.”
And then it hit me. Though that time seems like yesterday, Jerusha is currently seventeen years old!
I have been reading the very same books repeatedly many times a day for 20 years! Now I know what you’re thinking. This isn’t a big deal. But let me remind you that these books are not literary classics. I’m not reading Ben Hur(although I have gone through the Little House Series three times now with each successive age group) or books that can be reasonably plumbed to their ultimate depths in 20 years of re-reading. I’m reading Dr. Seuss and board books with entrancing titles like “Apple, Ducks, Block” Incidentally, that particular book is a true classic in its own right because it has managed to make it through thirteen babies and still be readable, or at least gummable.. It meets the criteria for excellent board book in my mind because it has clear pictures of every day objects in a child’s world, one simple word on each page, and it made it through the one-year-old Elijah demolition cyclone intact.
Seriously, folks. Its not a wonder that my children start college at 15 and 16. The wonder is that their mother is still a relatively sane human being who can carry on a fairly decent conversation. Give me another year and I’ll crack. This is how it’ll sound...

Neighbor getting mail: “Good morning, Leah!”
Me (bemused) “... Get up! It’s day! The sun is up! Day is not a time for sleep. Now all the dogs get up! Go dogs go!”
Neighbor backing away, “Go?? Okay! See you tomorrow!”
Me (still muttering on the way into the house) ...”If you give a mouse a cookie, he’s going to ask for a glass of milk...and if you give him the milk....”

At the store...
Me :“A a A a What begins with A?”
Produce guy: “Asparagus? Apples?”
Me: “Aunt Annie’s Alligator, A a A”
Cashier: “That’ll be $167.42”
Me: “Many mumbling mice are making midnight music in the moonlight mighty nice.”
Cashier:” Debit... Please enter your PIN Number...”
Me: “Silly Sammy Slick sipped six sodas and got sick, sick, sick!”
Kids: “Mom, what are we having for dinner??”
Me: “Jam on bread. We like that. When its sticky and it lingers, we can lick it off our fingers.”

The rhyming is catchy. That’s what makes it maddeningly easy to learn. Ask anyone who pens jingles for a living why they write the way they do and the answer will have nothing to do with creative license and innovation. It has everything to do with stickiness, or the way the concept sticks with you. Have you ever said, “I just can’t get that stupid song out of my head?” THAT is why we have Dr. Seuss! Of course, little children LOVE repetition more than they love peanut butter sandwiches. It helps them learn. And, God help me, I am a sucker for a learning child. It just never gets old. I love to see their responses, see them thinking and developing language. I may have read “Apple Ducks Block” a conservative 140,000 times in my life, but to Keturah, it’s brand new. And so for me, its also brand new every time I share it with her.
I have a feeling that as my strength and agility give way to old age, the only thoughts left in my poor confused brain will be these bits of my “Mommy Mantra.” After all, its not my amazing sparks of insight that take up most of my days, not my wisdom gleaned over 30 years of teaching children, not even the Bible verses I memorized which have made the deepest grooves in my grey matter..It’s little snatches of literary fluff that have formed shocking crevasses in my cerebellum from the sheer repetition of them. No brainwashed POW has anything on me. After all, I did it voluntarily. I made my mouth form the words “Pat-a-Cake, Pat-a-Cake Baker’s Man” and “Jack and Jill Went Up the Hill” more often than any other phrases over a two decade span, and this includes the ever maternally popular “Did you make your bed?” and “Don’t put the cat in the toilet!” I’ve spoken the tongue-twisting rhymes or ploddingly mundane labels over and over , more often than anything besides diaper changing, and you don’t want to know what THAT”S done to my psyche.
I’ve stated these phrases in my sleep, especially the restless sleep with a new baby and a sick toddler. I’ve even found interesting deep parapsychology in them at times that seems to fade with morning light. I’ve repeatedly the seemingly innocuous words until they had a life of their own, a sort of family culture that binds my children to each other through the shared experience base. We all replayed the Amelia Bedelia predicament with misunderstanding words of double entendre’. We’ve laughed at the Stupids, thrilled at the independence of the Boxcar Children and solved mysteries with Encyclopedia Brown.
“Once upon a time,” begins the most magical time I know, parental brain damage notwithstanding.
And I wouldn’t have it any other way.
THE END