Saturday, November 24, 2007
Books ... not always a chew toy
My son likes to chew on everything. We have a lot of great board books, and also regular books, that I would love to sit down and read with him or show him the pictures. When I try to read/look at the books with him he tries to chew on them! Has anyone else dealt with this? How do I teach him that it's not okay to chew on books. Do I keep taking them away or stop reading to him if he tries to "eat" the book? I'm wondering how I let him know that it's not okay to chew on some books but others (like plastic ones) it's okay to chew on.
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7 comments:
This is probably not the best advice, but my daughter had one board book that she absolutely loved to chew on. So, I just gave in on that one, and handed it to her to gnaw away at while I read her other books. (I'm such a lazy mom! But, it worked for us!)
We have books that we keep nice and books she's allowed to do whatever she wants with! Honestly, I let her do whatever she wants with most of them. She will grow out of the chewing and of course I only wanted her to chew on the "not as good" books :) I want her to love books and so I leave most of them at her level so she can do what she wants, even if it means chewing on them!
I've heard that its okay to let kids chew on books because its giving them a positive impression of the books....of course you would only let them chew on board books and not paper books. Maybe you just need to keep the paper books put away until your child is old enough to understand why he can't chew on books. I've kept all of my paper books away (which makes me sad...I love those books) until Megan can understand that they're special and can't be dealt with roughly. I don't know if that helps at all...but that's what I've done so far. (and the chewing thing my librarian told me at a baby storytime...)
That is tough - I let my 8 month old chew away. I figure that we only have a few books, so he can chew away on them and I can replace them. I am just glad he interacts with them. Eventually I plan on teaching him how to treat them, but right now EVERYTHING goes in his mouth.
Thanks for the advice everyone. I guess I can just let him have the few books that he's already chewed up and save the rest for a bit later. His board books are all mangled though, I didn't ever think they'd be hard to chew through but they are so thrashed it's unbelievable....oh well, I guess babies will be babies and need to explore. I don't want to keep him from discovering new things. And I've also heard that babies "feel" with their mouth for a long time....He will grow our of it eventually. Thanks again!!
another one I thought about later are those foam bath books that are plasticky and rubbery-great for chewing and more durable! those might work!
I've been trying to figure out why I don't have this problem. I think because we started reading books for like a half hour at about 4 months old right before bed and we usually let her have a pacifier in her mouth to calm down for bed. I guess she got in the habit of just looking at pictures and flipping through pages because her mouth was already full. Once she was older, I actually said "No." when she chewed on books. I found that board books actually became ruined through chewing. It hasn't negatively affected her. She hands me books constantly throughout the day.
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