If you are an adult caring for a young child, chances are there is a book or two or three you can recite without looking at the words. And perhaps your child can do the same. Why do children ask for the same book again and again? And should we keep reading? Yes, repetition is a critical part of learning. Take a deep breath and keep reading. You are building your child’s brain!
Cause and Effect
Once babies become toddlers, they start navigating the world on their own and seek to understand how their actions affect people and objects around them. Sometimes this behavior can make us crazy like when they drop their cup from their highchair, you pick it up only to have them drop it again. They are conducting an important experiment. What does the cup do? What do you do? And it is always the same?
Toddlers are constantly gathering information. This is why they can spend hours stomping in a puddle, opening and closing doors, and requesting the same bedtime story again and again. Repetition helps reinforce memory. We use our memory to make predictions about the future. When children are repeating the same actions or listening to the same story, they are exercising and building the part of their brain responsible for prediction and planning.
Language Development
Young brains are wired to look to for patterns. Pattern recognition is key to learning a language. This is why children are drawn to nursery rhymes, poetry, alphabet, and counting books. Rhythm and rhyme, predictable sequences, and playing with sounds are how children build the phonological awareness needed to learn the language and eventually to read.
Once children have heard a story over and over, they feel confident about what is going to happen. This makes sharing books more fun for children, but it also allows their brains to shift to a deeper focus on language. They are ready to absorb and process vocabulary.
Comfort and Love
When a child can predict what is going to happen, they can make sense of the world around them and that gives them a sense of comfort. Young children are seeking that comfort and predictability, not only from the story but from the adult reading it to them. Reading a book repeatedly, as boring as it may feel, gives young children the sense that they can count on the story, and they can count on you to share it with them.
Reading the same book again, even if it is not the one you would choose, conveys the message that books, reading, and sharing time together are important. Even if you think you can’t read that book one more time, take a deep breath and read it again. One day your child will stop asking for that book and move on to others, but the roots of love, language, and literacy will continue to grow.
