My Mother-in-Law Says the Way I Read Books to My Baby Is Harmful

Care and Feeding is Slate’s parenting advice column. Have a question for Care and Feeding? Submit it here.

Dear Care and Feeding,

My in-laws and I disagree on our approach to reading children’s books to my infant.

I fully embrace the whimsy of magic and animal anthropomorphism, and read stories about animals performing human behaviors without qualm. I can’t wait until my son and I can read books like Harry Potter and Redwall together.

My mother-in-law, however, constantly interrupts her book reading to point out that these animal behaviors are “silly” and “just pretend.” She says she doesn’t want to “confuse him.” I worry that she is squelching his sense of whimsy, fantasy, and imagination before it even has a chance to form. I will add that my mother-in-law is not particularly fun and quite rigid in her thinking. My husband sort of agrees with her that our son could become “confused.” He is also rigid like his mother and definitely not whimsical. Who’s right?

Dear Believe in Magic,

I agree with you that your mother-in-law sounds like a bit of a wet blanket. Her disclaimers about reality also strike me as unnecessary—most kids learn quickly enough which stories are fanciful and which are based in reality; they don’t need adults reminding them of the fact that animals can’t talk. I don’t think your kid is going to grow up “confused” and believing that everything he reads is true.

But I also don’t think you need to worry too much about your son’s imagination being totally squashed by your mother-in-law. As his parent, you’re going to have a bigger influence on him than his grandmother (or just about anyone else). You’ll find all sorts of ways to encourage your child’s curiosity, sense of adventure, and imaginative play as he learns and grows.

You’re not reading to your son so that he’ll grow up thinking that magic is “real”; you’re reading to him in order to share books you love, in the hope that he’ll love them too, and to show him how fun it is to use his imagination and get swept up in a story. I’m sure he will still be able to learn those things, even if his grandma could be a lot more fun.

More Parenting Advice From Slate

Every night before bed, I read to my 9-year-old daughter. She’s in fourth grade, but she has a significant reading disability and reads at a first-grade level. A lot of her experiences with reading are frustrating and stressful, which is why I like to keep our evening reading time fun and low-pressure by letting her choose the books we read. For the last year, she’s been obsessed with one particular book series. I would never tell her this, but these books are the pits. They’re mass produced by a team of ghostwriters, and every single one has the same plot. There are currently more than 200 books in the series, not including “specials” and spin-offs, so there’s no way we’ll run out of them. We’ve read about 30 of these books at this point, and I’m completely over them.