Can Your Baby Read?

I have not used this product, however, I would advise against it. My kid is 4 now and starting preschool. When she was little, I was all gung-ho to teach her stuff. Letters, reading, colors, everything. She knew her ABCs before 2, she was writing her name before 3, she knew all about primary colors and secondary colors before 4. I wasn't pushy, and we had fun while learning. She seemed to just absorb it all & love it, but guess what? She's done! She is so sick of "learning" that she hates going to school now that she's old enough for preschool.

All the experts say that these early years are best for play and developing the imagination. I ignored them and now I have a 4yo that hates learning & hates school. I now spend my time in pretend play with her and she is much more accepting of school (but not completely).

Who needs a baby to read? What is it good for? I am not criticizing; I'm just offering my experience and its unintended results as something for other moms to think about. I won't be doing all this teaching with my next one!

I'm a teacher and the mom of a 3 yo. Like the others, I have not used the product or anything like it...and wouldn't recommend it for the exact excellent reasons of the other responders.

Here are a few more points to ponder: any time you introduce electronic media to a baby or toddler and use it regularly, you're running the risk of instilling ADD in your child. Baby Einstein, V-Tech, Leapster...toss 'em. Passive entertainment (even educational) is harmful at the age when imagination is developed. And imagination is an absolutely VITAL prereading skill.

Second: studies are showing that early readers have no advantages in school. The kids who learn to read when developmentally appropriate (and after important prereading skills have developed) catch up with the early readers with little effort and without the frustration that the early reader most likely experienced.

Kids develop prereading skills naturally through imaginative play (predicting, sequencing, etc.). The best way you can help his reading now is to read TO him. Let him develop a love of books and reading now. Forget the acceleration. In my opinion, it does more harm than good.

yea, you def. don't want to spend you're money on this. It's just a ridiculous super souped up way of reading your kids flash cards. All you have to do is get flash cards and read them to your kids. And books. those work too. i promise!! good luck! nicole

To answer your question...my 4-year old can't read yet, though she does recognize letters and numbers. As far as I'm concerned, that's plenty! She's learning those things partly from preschool (a low-pressure place where they 'learn' as part of playing) and because she is imitating her older brother (7 1/2) who is in second grade. She's learned quicker than him just because he didn't have an older sibling to follow, and I bet that your two younger kids will do the same thing as her. I think the other mothers said it best--there's no advantage to toddlers learning to read early, and there can be some big disadvantages. And there's really no reason to spend money for something. Just have fun playing with her and reading books to her! Good luck with everything. A.

HI S.!
THere are already many responses in Mamasource for this request, including my viewpoint. Check them out by doing a search. A lot of different angles & viewpoints, but I think great to start your 8 month old now, if you decide!

I like it! It correlates words with objects and actions. Davey is 15 months and has been watching the videos and reading the books since he was 8 months. He recognizes the words, but it's really too soon to tell if it will greatly affect his reading in the future. Either way, it's a great program... certainly not anything I could've done myself.

To respond to people who think we're "pushing" our children to read... I think that idea is absurd! Notice how NONE of them have ever even seen the product? It's a fun, interactive learning program and kids will get something out of it at any age. At 8 months, it helped us learn actions like clap, wave, and point. Now, at 15 months, he's learning about animals and the sounds they make. As long as you follow the program, keep it fun, and don't overwhelm your child with expectations, there is no harm that can be done with Your Baby Can Read.

My suggestion is to go on eBay or craigslist to see if anyone is selling one at a discount. I wish I had thought about that!

I haven't used it, but do know that teaching reading by sight is not the way to go. Get a good phonics program and wait until he is older. He may be ready at age 4 depending on his maturity and interest at that time. If he's not interested in learning to read, you're swimming upstream.

To be fair, I have not actually used Your Baby Can Read, but you're right-- it's basically showing your baby words and pictures, and they memorize the two together and "learn" the words. They're basically learning sight words, which is certainly a skill all children should have at some point, but you can accomplish the same thing with flash cards. You can definitely do this without spending the money-- just look at picture books, or buy some flash cards at the dollar store if you really want them. Good luck-- and good for you for questioning the value of something like this before diving in-- too many of us don't do this anymore!

There's an interesting book called "Native Reading" that gives some excellent ideas on ways to introduce babies and toddlers to books, reading, and letters in an age-appropriate manner (playing and reading aloud with the child on your lap, especially with one finger following under the words). This is FAR cheaper than the DVDs, but requires active parental involvement.

Keep it fun, make it special, keep doing reading and story time (even when they can read for themselves), point out letters, numbers and words all around them on street signs, in stores, on the boxes of toys or food that's in your cabinets. MAKE IT A GAME - and give them a lot of control in the games, that way you'll avoid the "learning burn-out" that one poster warned you about.
Toddlers LOVE post-it notes - one of our games is to write the name for something on the post-it and label things. (He sits on my lap and I'll say the letters as a spell out "M, O, M, Mom" and then he sticks it on me.) Another fun one is getting an index card that says "on" on one side and "off" on the other. And then I HAVE to turn the light "on" or "off" when he shows me the word. (I pretend that I'm trying to do something else like folding clothes and have to drop everything to hit the light switch when he commands, but he has to show me the right word and show it right side up. It's very slapstick and Three-Stooge-like and he just cracks up and has fun because he's pretending to be the boss. Be silly and improvise.

You'll learn to recognize their receptive moods and you'll also learn when they are NOT in the mood for those kinds of games. (I also get in the backseat with the kids and read to them almost everytime the whole family goes ANYWHERE. Adding 10-15 minutes of reading here and there really adds up.)

While pushing overly-academic material on kids when they care too young can have a detrimental effect, children who learn to read ON THEIR OWN TERMS at a young age have a great advantage because they can follow their own interests and entertain themselves at odd moments - riding in the backseat of the car, waiting at the doctors office, or all the times they are bored having to accompany adults shopping or doing errands, etc.

When he's older and starting to watch TV (certainly there's no hurry to do this, especially before age 2, but I'm assuming he eventually will), there are some fun DVD and CD sets about numbers, letters, and most recently science topics by the music group They Might Be Giants. "Here Come the ABCs" and "Here Come the 123s" and - you guessed it - "Here Comes Science". You can listen to the CDs in the car with the kids (and the music is actually enjoyable by adults, unlike 95% of kids music out there), and then you can watch the DVDs at home, and they are based on the same songs that they heard in the car.

Like Kitty, I have not used the product, but I would advise just reading avidly to your child. My 3 year old is already reading some sight-based words and learning phonetic sound-outs, and I've just read to him every day at naptime and bedtime as well as other times whenever we can. I've actually read several studies and articles lately advising AGAINST these programs. Check out a new book called "Nurtureshock" -very interesting stuff. I think you can do this exact same approach (baby can read) on your own, but reading to your child and fostering a love of books and reading is the most important thing -and free at the library!

That program is completely inappropriate for a baby's developmental level. Research shows that a child's brain is not ready to read until the are 4-6. Whatever your baby does "learn" from the program will not stick. It's a waste of time and money. What is more important is to read to your child, work on developing language, recognizing colors, etc... Your child will read when he is ready. There is no need to push it. Furthermore, children who are pushed to read often end up hating reading, and just because a child reads early does not mean he will be more successful in school. A large vocabulary, critical and creative thinking skills,story comprehension, independence, a desire to learn,and self-help skills are much more important.