There's a specific kind of tiredness that comes from reading the same twelve pages every night for a month. You know the rhythm well enough to recite it in the shower. They still want it.
What looks like a rut is a toddler running the same file until it loads instantly. On the first read they're decoding. By the tenth they can predict the next page, which frees up enough attention to notice the small dog in the corner. By the fortieth they're saying the last word of the sentence before you do, and that's the moment the language became theirs rather than yours.
A new book every night is a tour. The same book forty times is somewhere they live.
How to make the fortieth reading do more work
- Stop just before the word they know and wait. They'll fill it in, and filling it in is the whole trick.
- Ask a question with no right answer: where do you think he's going? Anything they say counts.
- Point at one thing per page rather than reading faster. Naming beats narrating at this age.
- Let them turn the pages, including badly, including backwards.
It's also worth letting the reading be shorter than you planned. A toddler who wants three pages and then the cupboard hasn't failed at reading. Three pages every night beats twenty pages twice a week by a wide margin, and it keeps the book on the side of things they chose.
What a story does that a rule can't
Tell a one-year-old to be gentle and you have given them an instruction they'll lose in about four seconds. Read them a story where somebody is rough with a rabbit and the rabbit hides, and they get to watch cause and effect happen to somebody who isn't them. That distance is what makes it bearable to think about.
This is the reason our own books each carry exactly one value rather than a list. A toddler can hold one idea across a story. Two ideas and the ending has to argue with itself.
