"Your Baby Can Read" Program: Does It Work?

for a while Usborne Books was selling Your Baby Can Read as part of our product line (I'm a consultant) and so I bought it to try it out, my dd was 18 at the time. the instructions say to have your child watch the same dvd over and over daily for 2 months before moving on to the next one. My daughter learned some word recognition, like Hi, Car, Star at 19 months...however at age 3 she does not know these words anymore. if you are rigorous and do the program every day the way they say to use it your child might learn to read but I feel it is more word recognition from exposure. it has kids running around and talking on it which my daughter responded to--when our starter DVD broke I found the starter DVD on the your baby can read website for $15 with a book. since they stopped using Usborne as a retailer their prices have gone way up...I would try to get my hands on a copy of the starter DVD and see how your kid responds to it and if you like the program or not before spending $200 on it...and you can get the set of the DVD's on Amazon for $59.99 it has the 5 DVD's and the basic flash card set. I wish you lived closer I would just lend it to you and let you see if you like it. it is a sight recognition program and if the program you have already has her reading step 3 books I wouldn't "regress" with your baby can read. I got my set at a greatly discounted price using an incentive I had as a consultant so I don't feel I wasted money but I never sold the set or pushed it because I didn't feel it was worth $80. I had customers get it as their half price item or at 35% of the cost but I told them flat out when they asked I didn't think it was worth $80. I could have had better commissions I am sure but I didn't feel honest doing it. I often lent out my set or the starter and found most moms agreed with me that unless you are going to religiously put your kid in front of the same DVD day after day after day just so they can recognize a word it really isn't worth it. it was fun being places having my 19 month old point out the word car or star to people but really it was word recognition and once we weren't watching the dvd's as much it left. I don't want to pressure her to read, i want her to love it and enjoy it and she loves books and I beleive she will be reading on her own when she is ready--I read at age 4, self taught because I was read to all the time. no your baby can read program for me!
on another note, the company was bankrupt when Usborne took over as their distributer here in the states and as soon as they were out of the red they cut usborne out of the mix started selling it on their own and raised prices on everything--another thing I don't like is businesses who have bad ethics...I think that also speaks volumes for the product.

My neighbor has told me about this program, and she did it a little with her baby. I don't know if she still does it. I would investigate a little more at this website: http://www.childandme.com/howteachbabyreadenglish/. They have free powerpoints you can download to start out. Just see if you like it.

I learned to read off a similar program as a baby and have always been ahead of my class. I was reading past what achievement tests could test by the time I got to school. We are doing the program with our 2 younger kids, 3 and 1. They love it. They do genuinely seem to be reading. The 3 yo more. We really like it. The kids prefer their Italian CD. They can sing the songs in Italian, and tell us what the song is about. It's half English, though. Anyway, since I learned under the same principles, I would think it was good. My mom is the one who bought it for us and she's got a PHD (ABD) in Early Childhood Development, so this is right up her alley. Have fun!

I do not have experience with this program, but like you, I also used "Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons," and I think it is one of the BEST ways to teach your child to read. You've already had success with it, and I say stick with what works! (Also, I can't figure out why a baby needs to read anyway. Shouldn't they be doing baby things?)

I got suckered in to this program. I feel it was a waste of money. My three year old likes to watch them now and then but so far we have not seen results like was shown on tv. As far as teaching infants to read big quistion mark, My baby does not even watch tv for more than two seconds and I don't think its the best idea to teach bad tv habbits so young, in the program they want you to show it to you child three times a day.