It was a stressful day. Our daughter had just had her six-week vaccinations. We were constantly checking for fever and other post-vaccine effects. It was also the day we first started reading with her. Both of us are readers and we knew we wanted to introduce our daughter early to the joys of reading, but we were not sure exactly when. So that stressful day, we picked up the first book we could find and read with her.
The book was Durga Lal Shrestha’s Dhaplaa Khyaa, a popular Nepal Bhasa song that we grew up listening to. Luckily, It is now available in book form, with beautiful illustrations by Suman Maharjan. While singing Dhaplaa Khyaa, our daughter moved her arms and legs around, more animated than usual, and she cooed and kept her eyes open until the end of the song. We sang the song over and over, with animated voices, and she seemed to enjoy it.
After that, sitting down with her to read the few children’s books we had become our routine.
A few weeks later we went into the first COVID-19 lockdown, along with the rest of the country. Like many times before in our adult lives, we turned to books and we started reading a new book to our daughter every day.
We chose an hour in the late afternoon, as the day slips into evening, as the time we would read to her. It was fortunate that her father had started collecting children’s books years ago.
Those 20 books became our solace, as we grappled with the reality of becoming new parents without any help or support from family and friends.
We became more and more dependent on books as the lockdown went on, and the spread of the coronavirus deprived our daughter of the normal experiences of infancy, such as a walk in the neighborhood, meeting her maternal grandparents, interacting with her cousin and other kids, and just seeing the world.
What encouraged us during that time was how our little one would react to different sounds and colors in the books. She started showing an interest in touching the books herself as she learnt to sit up. She would try to leaf through the pages, making little noises. She seemed to have a favorite book already. Our daughter and her father would sometimes go through more than five books in a sitting.
Photo credit: Writers’ personal collection
All this time, we were only speaking to her and reading with her in Nepal Bhasa. We knew we wanted to raise her with her mother tongue as her first language, so the books became a way to introduce her to the language we wished our parents had taught us as kids. We would read English or Nepali books with her, but translate the words or describe the book to her in Nepal Bhasa. We wish we had more books in Nepal Bhasa for very young children, but there are very few available right now. At 19 months now, our daughter can say a few words of the verses of Dhaplaa Khyaa as well as other Nepal Bhasa children’s songs.
We now know that there is no right age to start reading with your children. Start early. They do not need to understand the story or know what the illustrations represent. They will enjoy the sound of your voice and its intonations, the ebb and flow of the language, and your hand gestures and body language. Reading is a way of communicating with your child. You can even read a newspaper with her.
As a newborn and infant, our daughter was spending a lot of time with me while her father took care of the household chores. Now that she is older, reading (and naps) became a father-daughter activity that helped them bond.
Nineteen months on, we realize that reading with her is contributing to her language development. She is going to be raised multilingual, and having books in all three languages– Nepal Bhasa, Nepali, and English–helps us teach them to her.
Reading has helped her connect with the outside world that she has barely seen, courtesy of the pandemic. She enjoys seeing ladybirds in the garden and recognizes them from her books. Connecting those dots helps her learn about the environment around her.
Photo credit: Writers’ personal collection
She currently has a mini-library in every room of the house, including a few for potty time. Some books are battered, some have half the pages missing, but most are still intact. The best part of this reading journey is when she asks us to read with her. She chooses the books now and tells us which pages she wants us to read aloud.
Her current favorite is Yeti Bhetne Keti (The Girl who Met Yeti), written by Anuradha and illustrated by Sonam Tamang, a book so well-thumbed that we had to tape torn pages together. She will perhaps never see a yeti, or even a yak any time soon, but she has met them in books.
Writers’ details:
Rishi and Sanjana are new parents and they are documenting their child’s reading journey on Instagram through @safudhuku.
