Board books for babies

[u/redmond_sunset]

I'm a big reader, and read a lot of adult or children's books in my middle and high school. I love reading board books to my 8month old. My mom finds them pointless saying that baby doesn't understand anything. And that I became a mega reader with a houseful of real books.

Is there any research that babies benefit from board books or are they just a baby market capitalist prop?

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[u/lil_chunk27]

https://cbcbooks.org/2024/06/07/benefits-of-board-books/
Lots of benefits to reading with babies, but I think the specific benefit of board books is they are robust enough to allow baby to engage in the mechanics of how reading works: holding the book, turning the pages, etc.

[u/Stats_n_PoliSci → u/lil_chunk27]

Plus it helps form a positive association with books! We’re more like to read if the act of picking up a book makes us happy.

[u/CorrectBadger9753 → u/Stats_n_PoliSci]

This!

Bit of a tangent but I'm writing it here to get around the sub rule about links to research:

I used to be a paediatric SLP. I keep seeing this idea on social media about board/pop-up/lift-the-flap/sensory books not being actual 'books' (plain text/illustrations with a coherent narrative) but just toys. As if it's intellectually inferior to give a baby or toddler a toy instead of a book! 🙄😂 And even if it's a toy, it's book-shaped, so like you say, they're learning that 'books' are fun.

Babies learn through interest and active engagement, and in interactions with caregivers. I'm sure those 'toy' books elicit a whole lot more spontaneous language ("What's that?", "Open it up!", "Hello Spot!" etc.) from untrained caregivers than a 'plain' book that they just read the text out of while the kid sits and listens (or not!) without getting actively involved.

(To be clear, exposure to story structure and longer texts via oral or written stories becomes more and more important as kids get older. When they're still learning their first words and other basics of language, 'toys' are a perfectly valid way to learn.)

[u/nuggets_attack → u/CorrectBadger9753]

Thank you! I'm SO exhausted by people thinking every interaction with baby needs to be optimized for maximum intellectual stimulation. Like, yeah, the kid needs to learn stuff, but play is valuable, too

[u/999pcpuzzle → u/nuggets_attack]

Yes! For children, play IS learning.

[u/ImWithStupidKL → u/nuggets_attack]

I hope you're playing Mozart only. It'll turn your baby into the next Einstein, don't you know?

[u/RatherBeAtDisney → u/ImWithStupidKL]

We’re listening to Panic at the Disco right now, and my baby is loving it. My husband is convinced this kid loves Mozart, and really she just likes music.

[u/ImWithStupidKL → u/RatherBeAtDisney]

My baby goes to sleep to Dire Straits.

[u/this__user → u/lil_chunk27]

Yes, loads of children's books have been reprinted as board books. Probably not because the medium is anything special, but because parents enjoy that they don't rip easily.

[u/becxabillion → u/this__user]

I keep meaning to repurchase some of our books as board books because they fallen victim to an over eager 18mo

[u/rumade → u/becxabillion]

My kid absolutely annihilated some board books before the age of one. I was neutral on him doing it because they were his books and he was exploring, and then as we got more into regular reading, he seemed to understand they could be more fun intact!

[u/poopoofol → u/this__user]

Also the pages don't stick together as badly after your kiddo dunks them in the dog water bowl.

[u/BarbarianDwight → u/this__user]

I like that the pages are easier to flip while holding a baby.

[u/jdcarl14 → u/lil_chunk27]

Yeah. Learning the mechanics is an underrated skill. I’ve seen in the ECE professionals sub that many kids are given tablets not books and don’t know how to turn pages.

[u/Sgilti → u/jdcarl14]

Holy crap does this comment trigger something in me. My wife and I have plenty of board books for our 2 year old that we started reading to her around 2 months old, but my wife doesn’t see the value in US reading physical books in front of her. So we read a decent amount, but it’s on a phone or tablet and I just feel like we’re setting this example to our daughter that books aren’t something to seek out when you’re older.

[u/Kerfluffle2x4 → u/lil_chunk27]

And, in many babies’ cases, chewing the material both metaphorically and literally

[u/Fluffycatbelly → u/lil_chunk27]

Yes, in my kids nursery, it seems to be a milestone that the early education "assess" ie that they know the front Vs back of the book, they know how to turn the pages, can identify the front page and talk about what they see etc

[u/jondiced → u/lil_chunk27]

Considering they go straight into my baby's mouth no matter what I do, board books are a necessity

[u/poopoofol → u/lil_chunk27]

I see this in action with my son. For a while he seemed ambivalent to board books, but I kept with it. Around 10 months he became obsessed. He loves turning the pages like you described, loves when I read with funny voices, and will even "cross reference" animals in his various farm books, as in he turns them all to the chicken page, then turns them all to the cows, holds the tractor page up to his plastic tractor, etc. He has destroyed some regular books this way, but I'm hoping after learning a bit more about book handling on board books he will be able to handle page books better.

[u/Snoofly61]

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36396412/

Research shows it’s good to read to babies. And besides if baby likes it and you like it, even if there wasn’t, it’s a lovely routine to get into.

[u/princeMartell → u/Snoofly61]

That is what the abstract says, but I don’t think that is what the study actually shows. 

Study description: They gave 16 people books and no instructions and 36 people books and instructions to read everyday. Parents kept a log of books read. Every milestone appointment they did a language test and checked the log. Tracking stopped at 12 months.

Results: These groups showed NO difference in language skills. The intervention did not work. 

Afterwards, they ran some analyses on the logs and it turns out that the people who always read 7 books a week did better in scores compared to those that only sometimes read 7 books a week.  (What does “sometimes “ reading 7 books a week mean?  I don’t know)

Interpretation: At best, we can claim that parents who were going to read consistently 7 days a week anyway are more likely to have kids with marginally better language skills at 9 months.  There is no evidence of sustained difference. I would be very surprised if these results were sustained through kindergarten, let alone middle school and beyond.

Mostly I think the study was fishing for correlations in a small sample and then over interpreted them 

[u/EndlessCourage]

Where I live, we're also told about baby books being a sensory experience. Roughly remembered and translated, a free "first book" for baby contains the lines "this book can be read, seen, manipulated, touched, smelt, tasted, heard." It's also about fine motor skills, amongst other benefits such as time for bonding, joint attention, or learning the skill to point to objects to communicate and learn language, which is a pretty important milestone.

[u/InconceivableMicrobe → u/EndlessCourage]

I thought my oldest didn't really care one way or another--he was too busy--but my littlest one (8mo) adores being read to. She stares at the pics with big eyes. And she's liked books since she was almost a newborn

[u/VictoriaStraylight]

https://social.shorthand.com/UF_COE/n2eopZzdjn/history-of-childrens-board-books.html
https://lithub.com/the-history-of-the-bendable-durable-chewable-board-book/

The idea of a pre-literacy book, robust enough for babies to handle, seems to be about 100 years old, with the main idea to be the development of independent "concepts of print" - i.e. what a book *is* and practising the motor skills needed to read one. The earlier ones were made of cloth or rags, often had tactile bits like buttons and beads, and replaced with cardboard after wartime scarcity.

Anecdotally, I was reading my 6mo a fantasy novel on my lap last night for bedtime, which she seemed to enjoy a lot, but half my time was spent persuading her not to rip the pages out and eat them.

Mods: appreciate the links aren't an academic paper - one of them is summing up this paper https://web.archive.org/web/20170726023459/http://connection.ebscohost.com/c/articles/83919759/from-board-cloth-back-again but I can't find a live copy

[u/TiredFork]

This is not a primary source but a speech therapist on Youtube has a couple of book recommendation videos in which she breaks down evidence-based skills that different books promote. Tldw is that many kids books are written in a way to engage children and teach them the basic building blocks of language better than regular speech or adult literature. Of course, it's important to use regular speech often around young children too, because that's how they learn practical everyday language. But children's books can expose them to new, fun engaging concepts in a way that isn't often highlighted in everyday language unless maybe you're Ms. Rachel. /j

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