While recently playing with a toddler I was so taken how
everything they
touch, see, smell, hear and do is building the person they
are growing into becoming.
It brought to mind a comment from a literature course taught
by Professor Edward Taylor in the1940’s. His introductory remark lives on—
“Reading offers you the opportunity “to build a self,
because you create a self, you don’t inherit it.”
Simply put, to build a self involves acquiring beliefs
&values where you experience emotions so that the self becomes larger and
capable to absorb more complex ideas of life and living. The books we read to children, the books they
hear and absorb, nurture their spirit of wonder, showing them who they are at a
moment in time and who they might become.
A cartoon from the New Yorker shows a mom reading to her son
with the caption:
“I can’t protect you
from everything, but I can read you stories that make you believe I can protect
you from everything.” But its not
just the story line that delivers the message of being protected; feeling
protected and loved is also communicated inside the closeness coming from the
experience of being read to.