For reasons I probably understood better when I was a toddler myself, the children I’ve watched have almost always had a passion for pulling every single book ( and audio or video tape, CD, DVD…) within reach off of the shelves. Next, they instinctively pile them into a mound so big they inevitably trip over it when making off like bandits. Sometimes when they’d insist on taking out the books on the shelf they knew were not their picture books I would gently replace the book in hand with a more appropriate choice from their board book stash. There were a number of cookbooks and cuisine magazines on one of the shelves in the room where we spent much of our days. The boys seemed absolutely driven to remove every cookbook and magazine from the shelf as if it was their job. Had they been able to talk at the time and understood what a job was, I’m sure they would have had that on the job description in their heads—right near getting as much food on the floor as possible.
Trying another technique, I would occasionally open up one of the cookbooks they pulled off of the shelf and begin reading it to them as they continued their well-rehearsed version of a librarian’s worst nightmare.
