Friday, September 11, 2009

Can I Read Aloud Without Yawning?

Aaron and I spend a lot of time reading. He will drop anything he's doing if I say "Lets read a story". I am definitely as interested in sharing the books with him as he is interested in listening.

Unfortunately, reading aloud makes me yawn uncontrollably. I'm neither bored nor tired but the yawns just keep coming. Some days, like today, its worse than others. I've tried sitting by the door, near a fan, on a proper chair, on the floor - EVERYWHERE. Perhaps its because reading automatically causes a person to exhale more than inhale. I've tried taking a deep breath after each sentence but I'm still yawning. And, it breaks up the story. So now, I basically try to just read through the yawns.

How do those people who read audio books do it? I've been Googling this but no answers so far. And, it seems that many other moms experience it too. So far, Aaron doesn't seem to mind or think that I'm disinterested in reading. I just tell him that I need breaks after every story.

While there are no solutions for me yet, I did come across some interesting trivia on yawning from Howstuffworks:

- The average yawn lasts about six seconds.

- Your heart rate can rise as much as 30 percent during a yawn.

- 55 percent of people will yawn within five minutes of seeing someone else yawn.

- Blind people yawn more after hearing an audio tape of people yawning.

- Reading about yawning will make you yawn. (Have you yawned yet?)

- Olympic athletes often yawn before competition.

- In humans, the earliest occurrence of a yawn happens at about 11 weeks after conception - that's BEFORE the baby is born!

- Yawns become contagious to people between the first and second years of life. (I read in a separate link that contagious yawning may have something to do with empathy so maybe thats why its only contagious after we have a year of experience.)

*yawn* *yawn* *yawn*

10 comments:

Cynthia said...

*yawn*

Bilbo said...

I read aloud to Leya quite a bit, and don't yawn while doing it; however, I remember yawning a lot when I used to read to my children. I think the difference might have been that I usually read to Leya during the day, while I was reading to my children before bedtime when I was tired myself. I do yawn a lot at the office, but that's a whole other story...

Mike said...

(Have you yawned yet?)

Several times.

Jean-Luc Picard said...

I love audio books. I have 'War & Peace' and the complete Sherlock Holmes', amongst others all on audio.

Mike said...

I came back to see if there were more comments ...... and yawned.

This months Discover magazine has a good article that includes this subject. (Just got it today, go figure)

Tanya said...

Science daily reckons, since the brain uses up to a third of the calories we consume and that generates heat, yawning is a brain cooling mechanism.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/06/070621161826.htm
I used to read a lot to our boys too but I cant remember yawning ;)

Amanda said...

I'm wondering now if its got anything to do with the dirty air we're breathing right now. We keep all the windows and doors in the house so the air is quite stale. I've really doing a lot of extra yawning this week. Even more than usual.

Anonymous said...

I also have this reflex! I'm a 30 yr old male, have always been unable to read aloud due to uncontrollable yawning. Haven't been able to get rid of it.

Nuttylamb said...

I know this is a really old post, but I came across it while searching to find out why I yawn so much when reading aloud. I recently found out I have mild dyslexia and that my brain works harder when reading so I thought it might have something to do with it. good to know its not just me :)

Sharon said...

My 15 year old son does this when he has to read out loud and we have yet to get to the bottom of it.