Goodnight, little house...

Changing Laurel's diaper is nothing short of an aerobic workout. She will usually go and lay down on her mat when I ask her to, but keeping her there is another story. Today, I gave her a book and a stuffed animal to occupy her for a moment. My attention was solely on the remove-diaper-wipe-fasten-new-diaper process until I heard "goodnight house, goodnight mouse".

Laurel was reading the book to her stuffed animal.

Now, as a Reading Specialist, I would define the process of reading as something a bit more complex than what Laurel is actually doing. Nonetheless, I was shocked that at 18 months, she would be able to associate words and pictures of a particular page within a book. I guess reading Good Night, Moon every night since she was two months old has paid off. But it made me say "Dang, what was with all those kindergarteners who couldn't even turn the pages in the right direction?"

I worked in the field of literacy for a long time. I always had a lot of those pamphlets lying around. I had a general sense that it was important to read to kids. I told this to parents and community members and big brothers and sisters all the time. As a linguist, it has been very interesting to watch Laurel's oral/aural language development. But somehow I thought the literacy part would come later. However, I am seeing that it is very closely integrated to the initial language acquisition. What will be interesting is to see the effects on school-age reading tasks. Will she be better at them for having had exposure to books early on in her development? Or will she turn out to have dyslexia? I have no idea at this point.

Ok, getting a little geek-y for most of you. But seriously...getting to watch a human being develop in front of your eyes is amazing.

What will she do next?