Dear Past Jess: The Messy Truth About Board Books for Babies

Dear Jess from six months ago. You're currently sitting on the peeling linoleum of the kitchen floor, surrounded by three baskets of unfolded laundry, staring at your youngest child. You just had to stick your index finger into his mouth to fish out a soggy, spit-covered chunk of cardboard that used to be the bottom right corner of the yellow page in a certain story about a hungry caterpillar. You're sweating, you're running on maybe three hours of broken sleep, and you're wondering if you're already failing at this whole early literacy thing.

I'm writing from the future to tell you to take a deep breath, drink that lukewarm coffee sitting on the counter, and stop beating yourself up. Because I'm just gonna be real with you: whatever grand visions you had about peacefully reading to a newborn are a complete joke.

Why Instagram reading time is a dirty lie

You know exactly the videos I'm talking about. You scroll through them at 3 AM while nursing. Some gorgeous mother in a beige, perfectly spotless nursery is sitting in a $900 rocking chair. Her hair is perfectly curled. Her infant is sitting in her lap, completely still, gazing thoughtfully at a beautifully illustrated page as if he's a tiny scholar contemplating the universe. There's probably soft acoustic guitar music playing in the background.

I want to find whoever makes those videos and force them to come to our house in rural Texas on a Tuesday afternoon. Because in our house, the dog is barking at the UPS driver, the three-year-old is trying to use a crayon on the hallway wall, and when you try to sit down with a chunky little storybook, the baby treats it like a professional wrestling opponent. He slaps it. He tries to eat the spine. He arches his back and flails his limbs like he's trying to escape a straightjacket. You end up reading half a sentence before he kicks the pages out of your hands entirely.

You sit there thinking there's something wrong with your kid, or that you're just terrible at this. You're not. Those internet mothers are selling a fantasy, and bless their hearts, they're making the rest of us feel like garbage for no reason. Real life with three kids under five means your reading materials are going to be sticky, torn, and heavily seasoned with drool.

What the doctor actually said

Remember when you dragged all three kids to Dr. Miller's office for the baby's checkup? The paper on the exam table was crinkling, the toddler was touching the biohazard bin, and you were just trying to keep everyone alive. Dr. Miller casually mentioned that you should be reading to him every single day. You looked at her like she had two heads because, frankly, the baby was basically a noisy potato at that point.

I'm pretty sure she said something about how hearing the rhythm of the words helps their little brains wire up right, and how high-contrast black and white pictures stimulate their optic nerves. She made it sound like every time you point to a picture of a cow, a new synapse connects in their head. Honestly, my brain was mostly mush that day, so I might be butchering the science. But the gist of it was that just hearing your voice over the chaos of the house is doing some kind of invisible magic up there, even if you're just reading the back of a cereal box or a Texas power bill.

If they don't swallow a flap from a pop-up page, you're doing spectacular.

The tummy time struggle

So you brought out those accordion-style fold-out things with the black and white geometric shapes to try and make tummy time productive. Because tummy time usually just consists of him face-planting into the rug and screaming like he's being tortured.

I finally got smart and started laying him down on the Colorful Hedgehog Bamboo Baby Blanket while I propped the pictures up in front of him. I'll shoot straight with you—it's not the cheapest thing on the internet, but I was so tired of buying scratchy polyester stuff that pilled up after two washes. This bamboo blend is ridiculously soft, and the little blue and green woodland critters are actually soothing to look at instead of being loud and obnoxious. It helps keep stable his temperature so he doesn't get all sweaty and mad quite as fast, giving you maybe four whole minutes to point at the black-and-white patterns before the crying starts. I use the larger size so it covers enough floor space to protect him from whatever crumbs the older kids dropped.

Things you just have to accept right now

Before you stress yourself into an early grave trying to do this perfectly, here are a few harsh realities about infant reading that nobody tells you:

• They explore the world with their gums. To a baby, a thick cardboard story is just a giant cracker that tastes funny. Chewing on it's literally how they learn what objects are.
• You will sound absolutely ridiculous. The high-pitched, exaggerated animal noises you swore you'd never do? You're going to do them. And you're going to do them in front of the mailman by accident.
• Rhythm is basically brain glue. You're going to read the exact same rhyming nonsense about a sleepy bear so many times you'll recite it in the shower, but apparently, that repetition is what makes them finally understand language.
• Movement doesn't mean they aren't listening. If they crawl under the coffee table while you're mid-sentence, just keep talking, because their ears still work even when their legs are moving.

A distraction for the teethers

Since we've established that the kid is going to try to consume the library, you've to redirect that energy before you go broke replacing torn pages. When he started really going to town on the edges of our favorite bedtime story, I finally just shoved the Panda Teether into his fist.

This thing has been an absolute lifesaver for my sanity. It's just a little food-grade silicone panda on a bamboo-looking stick, but the textures on it give him exactly the kind of resistance his swollen gums are looking for. Whenever I sit down to read, I hand him the panda first. He sits there gnawing aggressively on the silicone ears while I read out loud, and my books actually survive the afternoon. Plus, it's super lightweight so his clumsy little hands can honestly hold onto it without dropping it on his own face. When it gets covered in dog hair from being dropped on the floor, I just toss it in the dishwasher. Best money I ever spent.

Things that survived my middle child

Speaking of spending money, let's talk about that Wooden Baby Gym we got. It's... alright. Don't get me wrong, the natural wood frame is gorgeous and it doesn't look like a neon plastic spaceship crash-landed in the middle of our living room. It's got these cute little tactile animal toys hanging down.

But if I'm being perfectly honest, my middle kid mostly just stared at the wooden elephant for about five minutes before deciding that trying to pull the rug fuzz out of the carpet was way more interesting. It's fine for keeping them contained for a minute while you switch over the laundry, and it looks beautiful in pictures if you care about that sort of thing. But don't expect it to magically entertain them for an hour while you prep dinner.

If you want to look at gear that honestly makes sense and survives the chaos of rural parenting, you should probably just browse the Kianao baby care collections next time you're trapped under a sleeping infant.

Grandma Betty was right

You remember what Grandma Betty used to say when we were pregnant with our oldest? Bless her heart, she thought buying specialized reading material for a three-month-old was the stupidest thing she'd ever heard in her eighty years on this earth. She used to tell me how she would just prop my mom up in a laundry basket and read the Sears catalog out loud while she snapped green beans on the porch.

I rolled my eyes at the time, but she kind of had a point. The baby doesn't care if you're reading an award-winning illustration of a farm or the back of a shampoo bottle. They just want the comfort of your voice.

The cautionary tale of your oldest

Look at what happened with our oldest boy. With him, we tried so hard to do everything "right." We bought all the expensive flashcards. I'd sit him in my lap and physically hold his hands down so he couldn't grab the pages, forcing him to look exactly where I was pointing while I enunciated every single syllable like a drill sergeant.

And what happened? He hated it. He associated reading with being trapped. Now he's almost five, he has the attention span of a gnat, and getting him to sit still for a story is like trying to bathe a cat. He only wants to look at comic books about farts.

So with this baby, just let it go. Let him hold it upside down. Let him flip three pages at once. If you only read two words before he throws it across the room, pick it up tomorrow and try again. You just grab whatever thick cardboard story hasn't been completely dissolved by baby spit, use that ridiculous voice you swore you'd never do, and pray it buys you five minutes of peace.

You're doing fine, Jess. The house is a wreck, the laundry is never going to be completely folded, and your books are going to have teeth marks on them. It's all part of it.

Before you run off to buy out the local bookstore thinking it'll make you a better mom, maybe just grab that silicone panda teether first so they've something appropriate to gnaw on while you read.

Questions you're probably frantically googling

How early am I seriously supposed to start doing this?

My pediatrician claimed you should start from day one, which sounds exhausting when you can barely stand up. Honestly, just start whenever you've the mental capacity to form a complete sentence. If that's week two or month two, they're still going to be fine. Just talk to them when you can.

My kid just closes the cover while I'm in the middle of a sentence, what do I do?

You say "The End" and move on with your life. Seriously, don't fight them on it. If they close it, the activity is over. Sometimes I just keep reciting the rest of the rhyme from memory while they crawl away, mostly just to entertain myself.

Are the inks toxic when they inevitably eat the pages?

I worried about this constantly with the first baby. From what I understand, most modern stuff made for infants uses non-toxic soy or water-based inks exactly because publishers know babies are going to eat them. Just try to buy from reputable brands, and if a chunk genuinely breaks off, fish it out so they don't choke.

Do I really have to do the silly voices?

I mean, nobody is forcing you, but it's pretty much the only way to keep their attention for more than ten seconds. A flat, normal voice puts them right to sleep—which, now that I think about it, might really be a great strategy for nap time. But if you want them to look at the pictures, you gotta hit them with the ridiculous high-pitched pig snort.

What if my toddler just walks away while I'm reading to the baby?

Let them walk. They're usually still listening from across the room while they play with blocks. I can't tell you how many times my three-year-old has walked away into the kitchen, only to yell out the rhyming word at the exact right moment from the other room. They hear everything, even when you wish they wouldn't.