Getting your toddler to respect books *sigh* this is a vent as well as needing advice

[Kosi]

So DD is 20 mths old, and we have lots of books for her. Some are "older" kids books that we read with her, and some are touchy feely ones that she loves. The last few months especially, she has been ripping out parts from the "older" books and happily presenting the bits to mummy. The touchy feely ones, she is pulling up or bending the cardboard bits.

So far we have a pop out counting animal book that has got a couple of decapitated lions and zebra's. The hungy catepillar was sooo hungry there is half a page missing, not just a hole in the apple anymore. And she has ripped parts of her wiggles shiny colour book and her "thats not my dolly" touchy feely book. She has chewed others, but that was when she was younger, so I don't get quite so angry about it.

But I'm getting quite frustrated, that I am continually telling her to be nice to books, and getting nowhere.

Help, how do I instill a respect for books into her?

[Little Chicken]

DD1 was exactly the same, I have lost count of the amount of books she has ruined. She would pick at the corners of her board books till a little flap came up and then rip the entire page off! Nothing I said worked. I just would not leave her unsupervised with any book ever. She has now grown out of it thankfully. She used to love taking labels off bottles and jars to.

[sneakysparkle]

My girls have always *enjoyed* their books like that too - so for that reason I always put special books away so they wouldnt get ruined.
Someone said to me once that trying to keep books "pretty" or "perfect" (ie unused!) doesn't help your kids to have a love of books, as it can be too hard, or too much work to enjoy playing with them/reading them.
She said that by letting them have access to them, and to let them "experience" and "enjoy" them is the best thing you can do
So, I relented, and now they are much better (books hardly ever get ripped or anything now!) and they also love reading! I quite often find the two girls cuddled up somewhere reading stories to one another

[berrme]

Put the books you really don't want damaged where she can't get them, then hope for the best with the others. There aren't too many books in our shelves that don't have sticky tape somewhere. The boys don't like tham any less because they look shabby... in fact the shabbier the book, the more likely it is that it is one of their very favourites.
In my experience they just don't understand why books are so special. They do stop pulling them to pieces, but even my 4 year old is not 'gentle' with them as such... pages still get crumpled during readings.

[Roryrory]

Board books are good with littlies. You can get bb copies of most of the popular titles

My nearly 5 year old is obsessed with books and absolutely adores reading, but he still hammers his collection (not literally). His favourites get dragged in and out of the car, shoved in his kinder bag and have the pages bent back and spines crushed as he holds up interesting pages for me to look at. We try to get him to be gentle, but needless to say I haven't yet given him the intricate "pop up" style books I have bought for him yet.

My advice is let her trash her board books and gradually introduce "nice" books under supervision.

[Heaven]

Just keep reminding her to be gentle and she will eventually get it

[Kosi]

Thanks all. Will just perservere with the nicely, nicely approach and put away some of the better books.

[AnyDream]

Agree with the suggestions above.

Also - give her lots of opportunities when it's ok to rip paper, peel stickers off sticker sheets, and scribble with crayons, etc. Make sure there are no books in the vicinity when the ripping, scrunching, folding, sticking, scribbling activities are taking place.

[mummato1]

DS is the same, and I find it incredibly frustrating as I have such a love for books!! We went through 2 copies of Where is the Green Sheep before his fist birthday as he too would pick at the corners of board books and eventually tear the paper of the boards.

At the moment his favourite book is 'what colours are you knickers' which is a lift the flap book so we are constanly telling him to be careful and not to be rough. The last thing I want to do is to put all his books up, as they are by far what he plays with the most and he loves to sit there and flick through his books.

I let DS have full access to most of his books, but a few specials ones are placed up high for when he is a bit older.