YourBabyCanRead

You do not need to buy a reading program.

The secret to language and reading is to talk all of the time and to read as much as possible to your child.

I remind parents that sometimes you will feel like you are in some sort of "voice over" when you are with an infant or toddler.

You keep an ongoing conversation with your infant when they are awake. "Good morning sweetie! Did you sleep good? I like your bright eyes. OOo, your diaper is wet. I am going to lay you down on the changing table, please hold the diaper, thank you. What dreams did you have last night?"
Today I am going to vacuum the living room, give you a bath and yummy, squash for lunch! Dad is going to work, so we are going to surprise him with lunch!

Some parents do not do this because they do not think their children understand them.. Instead they keep the radio on or the TV going, but they forget that even infants will pick up the parents voice cues, from the tone of the human voice.

In the car, if your infant, toddler is awake, you can ask them questions, Tell them what the grocery list is, sing them a song..Point out what is going on outside of their window. If you are too tired, turn on a childrens book on CD.

At the store, your child will be fascinated, with your on going dialog about what you and your child are looking at. Our local Grocery store is H.E.B.

I think those are the 3 Letters our children learn the quickest, because we do not say "we are going to the store" we say "we are going. to HEB to pick up bread, Milk... The signs are everywhere in every neighborhood. On TV, on ads in the paper and mailers sent to our homes. The youngest children can show you the letters and the comprehend those shapes mean something,.

. Read to them even at the youngest age. And do not underestimate their comprehension and interest.

Board books, and picture books are fine, but as soon as our daughter showed interest in the story part at 6 to 8 months, we were reading golden books to her. Yes, we still used the baby book with the picture of the ball, but even better, we could hand her a ball and say Ball.

When she was a toddler, I would give her a piece of paper and a crayon, and together we would make our errand list or grocery list.

I would ask, what are we going to buy at the HEB. And she would start "writing" her list while I wrote mine. As she got older and started to understand the H was what ham started with she would scratch out ham. mostly the H.

Eggs,, she could make her version of Eggs

B.. Bread

HEB

Together we labeled everything in her room. Bed. Mirror, Window this is one of those projects we worked on when it was raining outside or it was too darn hot to be outside. Plus, she loved scotch Tape, so this was a bonus!

When she had just turned 4 we had started short chapter books. She loved the "long stories" Many nights we would read aloud for over an hour. We realized this was one of her favorite times of the day. So we made sure that naptime included a long story time and bedtime included a really long story time also,.

We not only always read the Title of the book, but also the Author and the Illustrator.. EVERY time. We could hold up a book and she could tell you the title, Author and Illustrator. You should have seen her at the book stores! She could call out the titles, the Authors and the Illustrators. Even the salespeople could ask her a childrens book title and she could tell them. Some of her favorite Books were by Robert Muncsh and Illustrated by Michael Matchenko. When we would attend story time they always read the Author, but our daughter would raise her had and want to also know the Illustrators name.

Just as our daughter turned 4, I had heard about B.O.B. books. They are these little books with stick figures, and were "Easy readers" I thought I would try to teach our daughter to read. Purchased the first set. On the way home, our daughter read the entire set aloud, I turned the car around and exchanged them for the second set. She already knew how to read!

Just through the everyday conversations.. the understanding the These shapes stood for sounds, she had picked up on how to put it all together. on her own.

The best part of all of this? WE were reading together,. Our daughter enjoyed reading, but she loved that we did it together, Teaching an 12 month old to read, is fine, but why? Nothing wrong with it, but it is like teaching a 10 year old to drive a car, yes, it can be done, but for what reason? Children want us to spend time with them. Reading is a great way for parents and children to learn and explore together. It is also such a small amount of time in a childs life, being with them is 90% of the fun of reading with a child. Once we discovered our child could read, we turned the tables, She would then read to us. I would give her an option at naptime, I could read to her or she could read to me. I loved when she read to me, because I would get to nap and then she naturally would lay next to me and take her nap! Sometimes she would just read read aloud to herself for the entire hour and a half!

They actually just did a story about this on the Today Show and they said it is actually a scam! I wouldn't waste your money. I think reading to your child and avoiding TV as much as possible is the best thing you can do for your child.

there's a reason babies develop the way they do. babies are not supposed to speak fluently, catch balls, drive cars or discuss philosophy. shoving a baby to do things before he's developmentally ready will have long-term negative results.
read to your baby. a lot. make learning as much a part of your day as eating and talking and playing together. babies who are forced into accelerated academic programs are much more likely to learn to hate it than to 'have an edge.'
there is no need to buy expensive curricula to have a well-educated eager learner. we have the most amazing planet in the solar system to help us with that.
khairete
S.

I have a feeling it's probably no better than just reading books to your child and doing flashcards (my son loves these). He is not yet 3 and can "read" certain books (ex. Sandra Boynton books) and go through decks of flashcards naming all the words/pictures. I think it's just word recognition and memorization from hearing the same stories over and over and over.

There is a whole world to explore before reading. My youngest brother taught himself to read before he was 4 years old. He read my college texts in psychology when he was 8 and he understood them.
I read before entering school. The teacher was terrible about it since I did not fit into her lesson plan. She really made me miserable. My children had some difficulty and overcame it. They turned into superb readers, reading way beyond grade level.
Read to your child. This is the best reading preparation there is. Let your children explore the world and find out what is hot, cold, sticky, soft, pliable inflexible .
Let them climb and run and develop their bodies.
I am not an advocate of pushing children. There is one exception. My father taught me three new words every day. These words became part of my speech. I have a wide vocabulary and can speak 5 languages really well. My children have the same wide English vocabulary since they learned it from me just by speaking.

teachers HATE this program because it does not teach reading it teaches memorization. Children that use this program have to be retaught how to read in kindergarten. and it's much harder to be retaught something. If your child is ready to read, they will learn simply from you reading to them every night.
besides that , do you really want a toddler reading?? There are so many questionable things out there to read, ie, magazines in the checkout line, warning labels on bottles that to toddlers don't read as a warning label.

WASTE OF MONEY! Don't do it. You could do the same thing with 98% savings if you just use flash cards. It also doesn't teach your child to read, but does the whole pavlovs (sp?) dog thing. They see the word, see the action or subject, and associate it. They aren't phonetically sounding out the words (Like what you struggle with out loud) So I wouldn't ever purchase it and it makes your kids sit in front of the tv a lot.

We have the program, and while are babies aren't 'reading' it has been a good resource for us.

My oldest- 2 1/2: the video was a great way to 'calm' him down when he was younger. The video's have pictures / words / and songs - which both of my children love. My other child is 17 months and she wouldn't sit through the whole video when she was younger - but did learn the songs and would dance to them.

For me the system has been a similar tool such as the baby sign classes that I took both of them too. It gives them another aspect of language associated with the word / concept as they are learning language. My 17 year old now communicates with talking - although she's not using sentences she does have unbound-less words that she uses.

They both love the books with the flaps and like to lift up the flaps to see the pictures - it helped with animal identification - so they knew before we went to the zoo which animals were which-- they also can sign the animals as they say them. Having words, sounds, and signs associated with a spoken word are all part of early language development.

So while your child might not be 'reading' like shown in the video - I still found that it was a useful educational tool for my children. They still watch the videos and read the books. It should not be used in substitution for all the other activities that other parents suggested: reading / talking / reinforcing things with your child.

I have the program Yor Baby Can Read. I have to admit that it is helping to a certain extent. I don't feel that it actually teaches the child how to "read", but if followed as instructed, it is benefical. My son is 14 months and says 6-7 words. If you ask him to point to his, eyes, nose, mouth, ears, head,toes, belly button, foot, teeth etc, he is able to show you with no problem. As with anything, if it is repeated, your child will remember is successfully and either speak it, or act it out. Everyone is entitled to their opinion, but maybe you should try it out for a trial period, if you don't like it, you can always send it back. Its worth a try and I'm glad I bought it. Reading to your child is always beneficial, and less expensive. Lol. Keep me posted to let me know your views on it. Happy learning.

Hi, you can do a search as this question gets asked every few months.

We purchased this program for our daughter, and although its too early to tell the benefits you really can't go wrong. Usually if she gets any tv time its watching these videos. Even if she doesn't learn to "read" the words it teaches it exposes her to words, pictures, songs, etc. You may find that you can buy this in pieces at Wal-Mart, so if you want to buy step 1 and try it out. We also read to our daughter every night and give her a book to look at while in the car...she loves it!! You do what you are comfortable with.

My 4 1/2-year old can read really well--like on a 4th grade level-- and my barely 2-year-old can identify all letters by sight and tell me what sounds they make. Clayton could read Dr. Seuss books like the Cat in the Hat at 3 years old. I always try to make every experience a learning experience. When we go to the grocery store, I have my 2-year-old pick out letters and the noises they make off of packaging and we count (he can only count to 13). My oldest reads any signs or packaging that he sees. The kids enjoy shopping trips because they have something to do and it keeps my stress down because I don't have children screaming in the store. My oldest sometimes reads bed time stories to the youngest. I guess that my point is that you don't really need a system. You don't even need flashcards. What you need to do is spend the time to teach children and teach them early. I think that sometimes underestimate their child's ability to learn and don't give them the chance to excel. I do also think that there is some merit to the memorizing words, though. Most of my reading is done by memorization, not phonics. Both are important, so it really IS reading when the child has the word memorized, but they need to learn to sound things out, as well. Just my opinion and I am not sure whether or not it is helpful, but like I said, my child reads really well.