Overcoming a Channel Surfing Attention Span

This face says it all--I'm bright-eyed, in your face, and loud. I demand your immediate attention as my flushed cheeks fly from one activity to another.

This is Amelia...she and her twin, Emerson, both remind me of my husband watching TV--remote in hand, rapidly clicking through one show after another, too fast for me to determine if I'd like to camp out there for awhile or not.

My first child, Wyatt, was the exact opposite--relatively quiet, still, and reserved. With no one or nothing to distract him, he would sit in my lap for at least half an hour at a time, pushing book after book up in my face. I didn't mind. In fact, reading to him was (and still is) the best part of my day.

Now, he is an avid "reader," going through stacks of books at a time. Probably out of necessity since the twins' births, he has transformed into one who also likes to "read" to himself by looking at the pictures and creating the storyline either from memory or from his imagination.

The twins? They're a different story. Since they started to crawl, I've really worried about passing along my love of reading to them. Like their brother, they love the feel, taste, and look of books. Yet, they have always lacked Wyatt's attention span.

If twin brother is doing something else, it's easy for Amelia to want to follow him. Or when twin sister comes and tries to steal half of mommy's lap, Emerson always starts a shoving match instead of finishing the book.

Like Wyatt, though, they can sit alone in their little chairs for a half hour, flipping through the pages of book after book, providing me with some glimmer of hope.

Just this week, though, they've started sitting for longer stretches, sometimes sitting in my lap and making me read the same book five times in a row before I say, "Enough. Go find another book."

As I prepared for bed the other night, I passed through the kitchen to find Emerson reading (upside down) one of his favorites: The 7 Days of Creation. As he reached the last page, he pointed and said, "Geee-ssssus."Short attention span or not--at least they're learning what is most important in life...Who is important.