Opinions on Your Baby Can Read System

I don't think this really counts as "reading". These systems teach your kid to memorize a word with a picture...but when he gets older, are they just going to say the words in a book or actually comprehend and be able to think critically about what they are reading? As for phonics...a lot of our words in English are not phonetically correct...like "the", "of", "come", etc.....For a child to learn to read, they need a mixture of phonics and whole language. They also need to love to read and to value books and stories. I think a baby is too young for that...the best you can do would be to read to your kids constantly to establish that love of reading. I am a teacher and now that my daughter is four, she is learning sounds and sight words and how to spell things, I would never dream of "forcing" that on her with videos. The kids that do best in my class in reading, are the kids whose parents read to them constantly and have them read back to them.

Please don't do it. I'm a reading specialist and if you want to PM me I can go into more detail. I don't have a lot of time now to explain why (it could take a while), but this is NOT a good idea. Kelli H has the right idea and a lot of good suggestions in her response.

Most children with reading problems have problems with comprehension, not decoding. I've had kindergartners who could read a 5th grade text beautifully, but if you ask them the simplest question about what they just read, they can't answer it. That's NOT reading. Reading = making meaning.

Teaching comprehension is a lot more difficult than teaching decoding, but most parents put their emphasis on the actual decoding ("reading the words")...that's not where you should be focusing right now.

The decoding will come in due time (closer to kindergarten). For now, read to your child, talk to your child, give her new experiences, teach her songs and rhymes and play with words. Silly songs like, "I like to eat, eat, eat, apples and bananas. I like to ite, ite, ite, ipples and baninis" are GREAT for teaching kids to hear individual sounds in words. That's called building phonemic / phonological awareness and it's the first step. If they can't hear individual sounds and break them apart, they're not ready for phonics.

Most children are not ready for phonics until kindergarten or preschool at the earliest. Introducing it too early can do more harm than good.

For a great parent-friendly book, check out "Beyond Bedtime Stories"...here's a link: http://www.amazon.com/Beyond-Bedtime-Stories-Promoting-Li...

I haven't heard of that system. However I wanted to tell you about a few DVD's that have really helped my 2year old to learn her letters and sounds. She can even write some of the letters. The is a show on TV near us called Word World I saw on Amazon the other day they sell it. Then Leap Frog has several DVD's. Letter Factor, and a Story time DVD and a Word factor one. I'd recommend those. Good Luck.

Yeah my husband saw that a couple of months ago. I didn't want to spend that money so we created a home version. We created Powerpoint with the picture at the top and the word at the bottom and if we can find sounds we insert them in the Powerpoint. We go over it every day. He just started saying moon the other day. I hope this helps.

I have been debating to buy the system, too! It's a little pricey, but at the same time if it can help my son, why not? I can't wait to see what others say!

I was at Pooh's Corner in Breton Village Mall the other day and noticed that they have some of the "your baby can read" word cards for sale for like $15 so that may be a way to try part of the system to decide if it is something that would work well for you. I think the program looks amazing! It makes complete sense that children that are young can learn this-just look at kids who speak 2 languages! Much easier to pick up as a child.

C.,
I saw the same infomercial. I am curious to know what others think. Let me know what you find out. J.

We have the program. My dad sent it to us as a gift. The DVD's are somewhat entertaining (although my son gets a little bored with it at home, but will watch it in the car b/c he can't go anywhere else). My mother is a pre-school teacher and says that it was a waste of money and that children are not developmentally ready to read until they can reach their hand over their head and touch the opposite ear (which is usually around kindergarden). It is a very labor intensive program. We are supposed to let him watch it twice per day and then go over cards, games, and books with him. We have so many other activities going on that we have trouble making time for all that. What I DO like about the DVD's is that my son is just learning things like basic commands (ie: arms up) and the DVD uses those types of things, so I notice him finding his nose when the show the word nose and then say it. I don't think he's reading, but it's nice to see him follow those commands. I think it may be better than some of the shows they have on television, but honestly, if your kids are over two, I would say they might be pretty bored with it. I hope this helps! =) By the way, my son is 18 months.