Thursday, October 08, 2009

Parenting Advice

So my daughter is now one year old and crawling all over the place. She absolutely loves books and will often crawl over to her shelf, grab a picture book, and then drag it over for Mommy or Daddy to read to her. When she hands you a book, your job is to read it immediately, and she will let you know quite loudly that delay is unacceptable.

Sometimes she will drag a book over to the dog and prompt him to read it to her. But he is a dog, and so does not. This gets her very frustrated and again, she expresses her feelings vocally. My question is, experienced mothers and fathers: how can I get my dog to be more cooperative?

8 comments:

bob said...

Maybe your dog needs to be hooked on phonics.

wes said...

I can actually get my dog to speak by using treats, seriously give that a try.

Dan Trabue said...

You need to buy some of those wonderful picture-only books that even a dog can read.

I recommend the book Tuesday by David Wiesner

John said...

Ah, yes, Wiesner. I haven't read his stuff in a few years now. Tuesday is awesome.

gavin richardson said...

i bought 'walter the farting dog' that worked for us. pronunciation isn't always the best, but the smell is right on target.

the other one i play a siren sound and she howls.. it works

AL said...

Sing some very high notes... better if your wife does it to get into a higher range. Really brings out the howling in our dog. Our sheltie speaks so much & so loudly normally that we haven't tried to teach him to speak.

Divers and Sundry said...

If he doesn't know the story, maybe your daughter could read it to him. I've forgotten how old mine were when they started "reading" books to their dolls and stuffed animals, but it was quite young... Books and kids are some of my favorite memories.

truevyne said...

Here's one of my very best parenting tips for you. GET RID OF EVERY BOOK IN YOUR HOUSE YOU DON'T ENJOY, so as not to be tortured into reading it over and over again. I had no trouble throwing out every. single. disney. book. about a movie in my house. Who wants to read a Disney version of a perfectly wonderful fairy tale anyhow? Trust me. Do this before your child knows your strategy. And when she does catch on, you can say after you've dumped her favorite _Donald and Goofy Get Rich_ , "I have no earthly idea where that book went" in all honesty, cause who knows where the trash end up, right?