Quote: Books Before Five

From Books Before Five by Dorothy White:

In all this, a child's first experiences with stories and pictures, there is an immense amount of explaining to do. In sheer quantity of words, the actual stories Carol has read to her represent only a fraction beside all my amplifying remarks at the time of reading and afterwards. Sometimes when Dick is answering Carol's questions I see that because so much which happens to her is out of his sight and so many of her references are riddles to him, he cannot, try as he will, see what point her question is trying to reach. Yet an understanding father must know more of a child's background than any teacher. I am baffled to know how infant school teachers manage at the beginning when their knowledge of a child's particular meanings and emphases to words must be so slight.