anyone else have a book destroyer?

[petesgirl]

When DS was about 15 months he had an open-the-flaps book that he ripped all the flaps out of. I figured he was just too young for it and we haven't had any more problems...unti yesterday. He was looking at a book while i put DD down for a nap (about 5-8 mins) and when i came back he had ripped the whole front and back cover and the binding to shreds! I think i made him feel bad about by saying that now the book is ruined, its too bad we cant enjoy it anymore, we need to treat books with care, etc. But then today i caught him peeling at the cover of another book and stopped him before he destroyed it. He has recently taken a great interest in stickers and he was trying to peel the picture off like it was a sticker.
So, wise mamas--how do I teach him/discipline him?

[eagle]

i think maybe you just cant leave him alone with books for a little while. read with him and have him handle books when youre together, but if he continues to destroy books, just keep them from him for a while. hes so young. just tell him to treat books gently, but dont give him any books until you know he wont destroy them.

my son destroyed many books and i stopped giving him them. hes old enough now that he doesnt do that.

[Mali]

DD is 18 months and can't be trusted around anything other than board books. We have tension rods in our bookcases to prevent her from getting to our books and her books with real pages are kept up high so she can't reach them. She doesn't get to "read" her non-board books without supervision. The few times I've thought she'd be able to treat the books well, she's torn multiple pages that I have to tape back together.

She has free access to all her board books, and while she has previously torn off a number of flaps and removed the moving parts (books like Sniff, Lick, Munch, etc) and chews on her board books, those are designed for her age group. I'm not terribly pleased that she likes to chew on them and I work on showing her how to treat books properly, but I'm not willing to take away her board books. She can practice on them and if they're demolished before she learns, then it'll be okay. I'd rather that she be rough with a book designed to handle it than be rough with a book that can't.

That said, I mostly redirect if she's getting too rough. I tell her that we have to treat books nicely/be gentle. And if she's continuing to try to damage a book it gets taken away. She doesn't usually go get another book to continue the behavior and will move on to something else instead.

[Liziz]

My DD has had a hard time learning to be gentle with books, too. The biggest thing we've done is just keep lots of board books accessible, and keep the "regular" books out of reach. She's still welcome to read them, but only when she's right by us. The few times she's ripped a page (or tried to do something destructive) when I'm there supervising and don't catch her fast enough, I just immediately take the book away (which makes her upset) and tell her that she's not going to be able to read that book for awhile because she was not being nice to it. But mostly, she just gets board books to read unsupervised (luckily, there's lots of good books that are in board book style these days so it isn't all that limiting!)

[basil]

My DS is your DSs age and can't completely be trusted alone with real books. Most recently he ripped all the little tabs off of the mixed up chameleon, and brought them over to show me his stickers. He doesn't do it maliciously, I think he just doesn't understand that there are some things that are disposable (stickers, etc) and others that are not (books).

I told him he had broken the book and would need to be fixed and redirected him to another activity. I save the punishment for the purposeful hitting of me, the dog, or the baby. I taped the book back together. He still likes his board books so we mostly just stick to those at this point.

[mackmama]

My DC used to tear all the flap books, too. We didn't use them for months, and now we are able to use them again without problem. That being said, DC just tore a couple pages out of a different book the other day.