Non-productive labor

Economists have a concept called non-productive labor, or something like that, and the classic example is Soviet factories which put together raw materials, labor, and overhead but come up with such a shitty product that they can't charge enough to make money, never mind about fixed prices in a command economy.

Probably a better example of non-productive labor is trying to cut out words and phrases while reading children's books at night. We've all been there, bleary at 7:56 only half way through our three book quota, reading some verbose non-rhyming thing, trying to excise phrases to get the little one down in a timely enough fashion to escape spousal rebuke for poor time management ("It's past her bed time!"). But it's murderous work, trying to read aloud and read ahead at the same time and figure out how to condense without mangling the narrative. For the most part, it's more exhausting than just reading the whole thing.

And then there's the well-documented problem of kid memorization: "No dad, you forgot to say 'I like your shirt, Henry.'" There's nothing like getting caught red-handed.

Your best bet is non-narrative rhyming books with lots of pages, of which you can skip . Seuss's If I Ran the Zoo is a perfect example. You have to begin by never reading all the pages, so they never have a chance to memorize or internalize the sequence of creatures. Never ever read the whole book, and certainly not two nights in a row.