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YourBabyCanRead.com?

Overman

Master Poster
Overman
Joined
Feb 2, 2006
Messages
2,629
Hey All!

My sister brought this to my attention: http://www.yourbabycanread.com/

I guess they have been pumping out infomercials pretty often as well. It had my skeptic sensors tingling just a bit. I think the system is extremely plausible, but something about this just doesn't sit well with me.

Do you think this is a valid way to teach a child to read? Do you think it is a fraud? Would love some input from more informed individuals than I on child rearing.

Thanks!
 
Overman said:
Hey All!

My sister brought this to my attention: http://www.yourbabycanread.com/

I guess they have been pumping out infomercials pretty often as well. It had my skeptic sensors tingling just a bit. I think the system is extremely plausible, but something about this just doesn't sit well with me.

Do you think this is a valid way to teach a child to read? Do you think it is a fraud? Would love some input from more informed individuals than I on child rearing.

Thanks!
Click to expand...

Oooh, don't get me started on this thing! I have a friend who's raising a six year old and doing a great job of it. She invited a few of us over for dinner back around Christmas/Festivus/Channukah and the other couple who was there (Israeli man/Chinese woman - poor kid - talk about being predisposed to over-achieving!) was going on and on about this "system". They went across the hall and brought it over (my son was a whopping 3 months old, so she wanted me to see it before it was "too late for your son").

We all watched and I think my son would be right in killing us in our sleep if we made him go through that crap.

Rote work, memory drills, constant repetition. Horrible.
But the parents, who are really into it, basically said it wasn't much.. "do the flash cards and show the video twice a day, each".... (???!!!)

Their daughter, about four and a half, could read, but it was no more impressive than the little darlings I'd met 30 years earlier who could also read at that age.

And there's no improvement, as far as I can tell, with the negatives - the lack of social skills of kids who can read early. It was a complaint in 1983 at P.S. 41 and it would seem to be the same, now. Kids who can read don't make the extra effort to interact at Pre-School and Kindergarten. If making nice-nice with the other kids is too stressful or difficult, they can go hide themselves in an entertaining book while the other kids are making their ways through the early minefields of interpersonal relations.

It also seems to be a real handy babysitter. Strapping the kid into his/her high chair and having them run through their drill allows you to kill off a goodly portion of their waking hours. And it also saves you the trouble of thinking of interesting things to do with your child on your own.

Prediction: Dr. Rob, as he fancies himself, has a lot of loyalists. If this thread lives to see another couple of days, we'll have a new member arriving "who just noticed this thread", and who will go on and on and on and on like the Amway guy did.

I had some pitched battles with them (the Chisraeli couple) the next couple of times we ran into each other. They're a devoted lot. They cite statistics based on "a scientific study" without naming the study, and they compare their little geniuses to kids who only start reading at six y.o., which sounds to me like they're intentionally taking the late-bloomers(since most kids of my contemporaries have at least some reading skills by four or five).
 
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Overman said:
Do you think this is a valid way to teach a child to read?
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Nearly. They're teaching a kid to recognise pictures, but the pictures just happen to be words. It isn't teaching to read, but it does help them learn to read earlier.

I have a daughter who could "read" several dozen words by age 18 months. Pretty good party trick, and while she's been reading at 2-4 years above her age, now that she's 10, the others have started to catch up. That could also be because she's a lazy bitch, but she still stars at spelling, being about +3 years on her classmates.

Overman said:
Do you think it is a fraud? Would love some input from more informed individuals than I on child rearing.

Thanks!
Click to expand...

It's no fraud, but you need spend no money, as writing it yourself on pieces of cardboard gets exactly the same result.
 
Foolmewunz said:
I had some pitched battles with them (the Chisraeli couple) the next couple of times we ran into each other. They're a devoted lot. They cite statistics based on "a scientific study" without naming the study, and they compare their little geniuses to kids who only start reading at six y.o., which sounds to me like they're intentionally taking the late-bloomers(since most kids of my contemporaries have at least some reading skills by four or five).
Click to expand...

Child raising techniques brings out the extremist in most parents.
 
Some months ago when I first saw the infomercials for this program, I emailed the company asking for references to the studies demonstrating its efficacy. I received no response to that email or to the next two.

So I called the number (taken from their website) and asked the nice person trying to sell me the program for the references. She put me on hold to "talk to a supervisor," then came back to tell me that if I would provide my email address the information would be sent to me. I provided the email but never received anything.

Two more phone calls produced similar results.

A search of their website lists the creator of the program as having been published in some journal (can't remember it now and don't feel like going back). A search online showed him as a co-author (third or fourth credited, iirc) on a study completely unrelated to this program.

So I spent a lot of time finding out what I had suspected was true and changing absolutely no one's mind about it.

Sometimes it's always Monday.
 
Foolmewunz said:
And there's no improvement, as far as I can tell, with the negatives - the lack of social skills of kids who can read early. It was a complaint in 1983 at P.S. 41 and it would seem to be the same, now. Kids who can read don't make the extra effort to interact at Pre-School and Kindergarten. If making nice-nice with the other kids is too stressful or difficult, they can go hide themselves in an entertaining book while the other kids are making their ways through the early minefields of interpersonal relations.
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While I think that this system is ridiculous (even if it works, to some degree,) I also think that this statement is ridiculous. I'd love to see the research for your suggested 'effect.' To be perfectly clear, you're saying that kids who are able to read early have poor social skills as a result?

I could see that there might be a very small group of kids who might already be socially inept (such as kids with Asperger's syndrome) who might prefer reading to interacting with others, but to suggest that the ability to read is keeping children from being socially well-adjusted is going way too far without some hard evidence.
 
Is there any indication that being able to read before they are two makes kids more successful in life?
 
My younger brother is on this program and I think it's alright. He seems smarter than most kids his age, but I'd hesitate to put the credit on the yourbabycanread program.
 
My three year old wants to learn physics. I've been teaching her everything she can comprehend at this point. We're working on Newton's 3rd Law of Motion right now and it's giving her some trouble. It usually gives high school kids trouble too though, honestly. She loves pointing out instances where inertia explains the behavior of objects.

I guess that my point in telling this is that if a kid wants to learn, why not teach them. However, if a kid wants to play in his pureed peas and poop in his pants because he's only 3 months old, it's probably OK to just let him smack a mobile around and coo from time to time.
 
Great responses! Thanks all! I will be pointing my sister to this thread soon (though it appears to lack any references or studies, but this type of thing seems more like an anecdotal argument type of thing than a super peer reviewed study type of thing).
 
jasonpatterson said:
While I think that this system is ridiculous (even if it works, to some degree,) I also think that this statement is ridiculous. I'd love to see the research for your suggested 'effect.' To be perfectly clear, you're saying that kids who are able to read early have poor social skills as a result?

I could see that there might be a very small group of kids who might already be socially inept (such as kids with Asperger's syndrome) who might prefer reading to interacting with others, but to suggest that the ability to read is keeping children from being socially well-adjusted is going way too far without some hard evidence.
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I have to confess that the information could be outdated - I first learned of this 25 years ago, and it was at a lecture given to parents at P.S.41 in Greenwich Village in New York. I never actually read up on the subject, but the grade school teachers (and it's sort of a legendarily good school) concurred as far as I recall.

What you're saying makes sense, though, and I will stand corrected.

It should've read something more like: It isn't that early readers necessarily have, as a result, poor social skills, but that it gives them an excuse to avoid developing those social skills. I've actually seen this first hand, but I don't really know whether to lump that in with learning disorders or Aspergers,..... I don't know... I don't think I'd go that far. Sometimes a quiet or aloof kid is just a quiet or aloof kid, not unlike Freud's cigar sometimes just being a cigar.
 
ClassyElf said:
My younger brother is on this program and I think it's alright. He seems smarter than most kids his age, but I'd hesitate to put the credit on the yourbabycanread program.
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I think this is kind of the direction I am going with this. If you are challenging your two year old and they are developing well, does it matter whether it is because they are reading, or doing complicated maneuvers with blocks, or recognizing farm equipment, or whatever?

Paula Poundstone relates the story of when she first adopted her son, and he was given an evaluation to see how far along he was. They asked him to identify a bunch of shapes, which he couldn't do. On the other hand, he knew the names of all sorts of construction equipment, and could identify a backhoe, grater, crane, etc. It is a fair question to ask, how is that any less far along in development than knowing names of shapes, or recognizing words? Seems to me that not a lot of 3 year olds would be able to do that, and he is developing just fine, even if he hasn't been taught the shapes.
 
I don't understand this pushiness towards reading. Learning the basics earlier doesn't necessarily mean your kids will stay ahead, as kids tend to develop things like this in bursts. My 5 year old had pretty much no interest in words and letters etc when he was in nursery, then suddenly, the summer before he started school, with very little encouragement he began reading pretty much on his own and can now (end of his first primary year) read pretty much anything you put in front of him.

ETA - I learned to read at the age of 3 just from copying my older siblings
 
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pgwenthold said:
I think this is kind of the direction I am going with this. If you are challenging your two year old and they are developing well, does it matter whether it is because they are reading, or doing complicated maneuvers with blocks, or recognizing farm equipment, or whatever?

Paula Poundstone relates the story of when she first adopted her son, and he was given an evaluation to see how far along he was. They asked him to identify a bunch of shapes, which he couldn't do. On the other hand, he knew the names of all sorts of construction equipment, and could identify a backhoe, grater, crane, etc. It is a fair question to ask, how is that any less far along in development than knowing names of shapes, or recognizing words? Seems to me that not a lot of 3 year olds would be able to do that, and he is developing just fine, even if he hasn't been taught the shapes.
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I agree, different kids develop different skilland interests at different times. My nearly 3 year old (whose language development is a bit behind average) has very little concept of the names of shapes and practically none of colours, but he knows every animal name and the sound each one makes.
 
Professor Yaffle said:
I don't understand this pushiness towards reading.
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I do, I think.

Pushiness towards anything is generally a good thing as far as children's intellectual development goes. Contrary to the OP's opinion, small children tend to like repetitive memorization games and rote work, and they thrive on it. Whether they're learning colors, shapes, the names of animals, or words almost doesn't matter.

Children also thrive on interaction with their parents/caregivers. They love playing simple games and being told how bright they are for correctly identifying a red circle or the word "ball."

So while there may not be any long-term benefit from being shown the flashcards with the word "ball" as opposed to flashcards with a picture of a backhoe, there will almost certainly be benefits over not being shown flashcards at all. Which is unfortunately more the default for todays children.
 
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