Your Baby Can Read!

[albertGQ]

http://www.yourbabycanread.com/

So we recently bought this for our 10 month old son. Has anyone heard good or bad things about this? Is this a good investment in our baby or did we get ripped off?

Education is very important to us and I want to give my baby a head start in learning how to read.

TIA CP!

[SportsJunky]

I've seen the infomercials. Let us know how it goes.

[redforever]

Give your child the enjoyment and love of reading by reading to them whenever you can.

In the meantime, your child is 10 months old, just a very little baby. Give your child the enjoyment of being a child by letting them play. Little people grow up into big people all too soon, let them enjoy the "little" stage in their life.

[troutman]

I don't know if those kids are really reading, or have just memorized the cards.

Your Baby Can Read - Not!

http://www.theness.com/neurologicablog/?p=569

I have received numerous questions recently regarding the latest infomercial craze called Your Baby Can Read. This is a program that promises to teach infants and toddlers how to read, giving them a jump start on their education.

In general, studies of neurological development and education show that forcing kids to learn some task before their brains are naturally ready does not have any advantage. You cannot force the brain to develop quicker or better. In fact, it seems that children need only a minimally stimulating environment for their brain development program to unfold as it is destined to.

The Your Baby Can Read program is an extreme whole word appraoch. Infants and toddlers are taught to memorize words, which they can then recognize and name from memory, even before they can understand what they are reading. Critics of this approach claim that this is not really reading, just memorization and association. Some even caution that by taking an extreme whole word approach, phonic understanding can be delayed and the net result can be negative.

Others are critical of this entire approach of forced learning at a very young age. It is more productive, they argue, to give the child a loving supportive environment and let their brain develop as it will. You are far better off spending your time playing with and bonding with your child than engaged in drills or having them sit in front of a video.

There also does not appear to be any evidence that programs like Your Baby Can Read have any long term advantage.

While the background concepts are quite interesting, the bottom line is that we have another product being marketed to the public with amazing claims and no rigorous scientific evidence to back them up. This product also falls into the broader category of gimicky products claiming to make children smarter or more successful academically.

Anxious parents wanting to give their kids every advantage is a great marketing demographic, in that they are easily exploited


Dr. Novella is an academic clinical neurologist at Yale University School of Medicine. He is the president and co-founder of the New England Skeptical Society. He is also the host and producer of the popular weekly science podcast, The Skeptics’ Guide to the Universe.

[albertGQ]

Originally Posted by redforever

Give your child the enjoyment and love of reading by reading to them whenever you can.

In the meantime, your child is 10 months old, just a very little baby. Give your child the enjoyment of being a child by letting them play. Little people grow up into big people all too soon, let them enjoy the "little" stage in their life.

Thanks for telling me how to raise my son, but all I asked is about the product

[ricoFlame]

Originally Posted by albertGQ

Thanks for telling me how to raise my son, but all I asked is about the product

[yads]

Well according to this study:
http://www.time.com/time/health/arti...650352,00.html

...the research team found that with every hour per day spent watching baby DVDs and videos, infants learned six to eight fewer new vocabulary words than babies who never watched the videos. These products had the strongest detrimental effect on babies 8 to 16 months old, the age at which language skills are starting to form. "The more videos they watched, the fewer words they knew," says Christakis. "These babies scored about 10% lower on language skills than infants who had not watched these videos."

[Suave]

Penn and Teller featured this product on their Baby Bulls@!! episode. I think that says a little about how good of an investment it is.

If anything it seems like the kids are just memorizing the word and the corresponding action. They see the word clap (not read it) and get conditioned to clap. I don't see how that will help them with reading later on.

[Prototype]

If these guys were at the Stampede, I would have bought it. I'm glad that I didn't, cause my 18 month old son seems to be picking up words at an amazing rate. I think he knows more words that Stortini right now.

In all seriousness... we read to my son, and let him watch only developmental shows (Sesame Street, Word World, Baby Einstein, Backyardagans, Night Garden, etc). He blows me away with everything that he's picking up. He knows animals, letters, shapes... He even knows most of the characters on Sesame Street (His new thing is pointing out Cookie Monster... "Coo-KEY").

We give him puzzles to work on, and he loves the big lego blocks. But the key is that when he's playing, we're there with him, and we try to encourage him and challenge him as we go.

Is this product bad? I don't think so, it's another tool to use, but I don't think it's the magical be-all-end-all to teach your child to read.

PS - I may or may not have downloaded the DVDs, and it may or may not look basically like a lower production value Baby Einstien... just saying)

[Peanut]

Is it sort of similar to Baby Einstein stuff? I've heard decent things about Baby Einstein but I haven't bought any of it (yet).

[Antithesis]

I'm no cognitive scientist but this product doesn't strike me as something that'd be useful - you don't see many people being able to read at ages below 5 for a reason - because their brains aren't ready for it.

[troutman]

The Mozart Effect:

http://skepdic.com/mozart.html

The Mozart effect is a term coined by Alfred A. Tomatis for the alleged increase in brain development that occurs in children under age 3 when they listen to the music of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.

And isn't it likely that the money could be better spent?

Yes, according to Kenneth Steele, a psychology professor at Appalachian State University, and John Bruer, head of the James S. McDonnell Foundation in St. Louis. Contrary to all the hype, they claim that there is no real intelligence enhancing or health benefit to listening to Mozart.

In his book The Myth of the First Three Years, Bruer attacks not only the Mozart effect but several other related myths based on the misinterpretation of recent brain research.

The Mozart effect is an example of how science and the media mix in our world. A suggestion in a few paragraphs in a scientific journal becomes a universal truth in a matter of months, eventually believed even by the scientists who initially recognized how their work had been distorted and exaggerated by the media. Others, smelling the money, jump on the bandwagon and play to the crowd, adding their own myths, questionable claims, and distortions to the mix. In this case, many uncritical supporters line up to defend the faith because at stake here is the future of our children. We then have books, tapes, CDs, institutes, government programs, etc. Soon the myth is believed by millions as a scientific fact

http://www.cnn.com/HEALTH/9908/25/mozart.iq/

I had this discussion about reading with my mom. When she went to school, memorization of the word was taught, however I was taught to phonetically sound it out to spell the word. She said that she wishes she was taught my way and that she thinks her spelling isn't as good as it should be because there are words that she wasn't forced to memorized during school.

My view: Whatever makes the kid happy.

[Bobblehead]

You've already bought the product; it seems like you are just looking for people to convince you that you didn't waste your money.

Originally Posted by albertGQ

Thanks for telling me how to raise my son, but all I asked is about the product

Unduly harsh.

[You Need a Thneed]

Kids can certainly be taught to read early - I could read very well a while before I even went to kindergarten.

These methods that apparently teach kids to read so early, however, are nothing more than training a kid to recognize a word as a logo, then saying the word. No different then them seeing an object or a picture and telling you want it is.

Not much more than a parlour trick, IMO. A parent will be much better off in teaching their kids to read just by reading to them, lots.

[KTrain]

Originally Posted by yads

Well according to this study:
http://www.time.com/time/health/arti...650352,00.html

It'd be nice to see where these kids stand after high school, college, etc.
None of these studies talk about the long term effects.

I was raised on TV. Sure I played sports and was outside a lot as a kid but I was glued to the TV when I could be.

[troutman]

There is an interesting debate to be had around how much of IQ is inherent, and how much it can be effected by environment.

[Prototype]

Originally Posted by Peanut

Is it sort of similar to Baby Einstein stuff? I've heard decent things about Baby Einstein but I haven't bought any of it (yet).

As far as I've experienced, YBCR is like Baby Einstein, but with flash cards. It's a full set of like 3-4 DVDs or something like that, as opposed to the individual DVDs of Baby Einstein. I didn't like the early BE's but they were developed to keep a 3-6 month old stimulated.

But I think you can get the YBCR for the same price as about 2 Baby Einstien DVDs...

[peter12]

My mom taught me to read when I turned four just by reading books with me and gradually trying to get me to sound out words etc... It's helped me to this day by giving me a profound reading advantage over most of my peers.

[KTrain]

Originally Posted by albertGQ

Thanks for telling me how to raise my son, but all I asked is about the product

I don't know how you didn't expect criticism about the product or method of teaching kids.

10 months old is an impatient time for parents. They've started to do so much that you want them to do more. I'm totally guilty of this and have to remind myself that I need to relax and my kids are going to grow up fine if we're loving, encouraging but firm parents.