If you are beginning with a seven-to-twelve months-old the most important things to keep in mind are:
1. Keep every session very brief.
2. Have sessions often.
As we have said, a four-month-old will sometimes want to see all his sets of words one after the other at one session. However such a procedure would be a disaster for a seven-to-eighteen months-old. Use only one groups of five words at a session and then put them away.
The reason for this is simple. Each day your baby's mobility will be expanding. At three months he is relatively sedentary. He is a watcher. He will watch his words for a long periods. We adults love this, so we get into the habit of showing him all his words as one sitting. We get used to this routine, it is easy for us. But each day, baby is changing. He is getting more and more mobile. As soon as he is creeping on hands and knees a whole world of new possibilities opens up for him. He now has a driver's license and he is just dying to explore. All of sudden this sedentary little fellow, who saw fifty words quite happily, is no longer sedentary. He has no time at all for his reading. We become discouraged. Where have we gone wrong? He must not like reading anymore. Baffled, we give up.
The baby must be baffled too. He was having such a good time reading and then the words disappeared. It wasn't that he stopped liking reading, it was that his schedule became busier. He now had an entire household to explore. He has all those kitchen cabinets to open and close, all those plugs to investigate, every piece of fuzz on the carpet has to be picked up and eaten before the sun sets. You have to admit that there is an awful lot on a seven-month-old's plate when it comes to search and destroy. He still want to explore reading too but he cannot afford fifty words at one time. Five words at one time is far, far better.
If we provide him with brief session, he will continue to gobble up new words at a mile a minute. It is only when we make him late to his next pressing appointment by taking more than a few seconds that he is forced to abandon ship and leave us sitting alone in the middle of the living room floor.
We adults love to find a nice comfortable schedule and then stick to it no matter what. Children are dynamic- they never stop changing. Just as we have established a routine, the tiny child moves on a new level abd we find we must move with him or be left behind.
Because this is so, always keep sessions in brief, then as his mobility expands you will be in the habit of brief session, which are a natural part of his busy schedule and fit in with his agenda.
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