Your Baby Can Read

[Lil Chickie Mama]

Has anyone seen this infomercial or am I the only one who stays up till 2am? It's about some guy who developed a program when his daughter was little and shows home videos of her reading at around age 2 or 3. It's interesting if it works, but it would seem that you could do it yourself. They see the word, they hear the word, they see the action or representation of the word. EG: Clap C-L-A-P Clap, *Person clapping* One thing that ticked me off is that one testimonial mom said, "You just plop them in front of the tv and you don't have to do anything" hmm, yeah, great parenting. Anyway, not to publicize them or anything, but has anyone heard/tried it? Is it worth all the 2am hype? Okay, waiting...

 

[Beekissed]

Haven't heard of it, so can't comment on the program, but I believe a kid can learn just about anything you wish to teach him. When I homeschooled my oldest, he was four years old. He was reading fluently from the Bible at that age. Any passage you wished to pick.

When he and his brothers were old enough to talk, my folks taught them The Pledge of Allegiance, The Christian Pledge of Allegiance, all the books of the Bible and the Lord's Prayer, as well as anything else they could teach them at the breakfast table each morning.

I would venture to say, if a child was developmentally normal at the age of 2, it wouldn't be hard to teach them to read if one wanted to put the time in.

 

[noobiechickenlady]

I'm not sure about that program, but my MIL bought me the book, "How To Teach Your Baby To Read".
It involved using flashcards with the words (simple ones at first) printed in lower case, bold, large (think 50pt on a word program) type. You show the card and say the word, and then put that card away, fairly quickly.
You start off with 1-2 cards, adding a new card every few days. Once you have about 15 words, you can start dropping the first few & adding new ones, so you've got an ever-evolving set of words.
The major emphasis was on making it short and fun. You show each card very quickly, for a short amount of time and keep the number of cards down so you aren't spending much time on any given session. You stop before your child gets bored and don't force them to look at the cards if they are in the mood to crawl around.
I taught my DD to read at speaking age, around 11 months. She got fluent about the same time she got fluent with the spoken language. We had some setbacks when she went to public school (local issue) but she's reading like a madgirl now I found the bathtub to be a good place to start.

The theory is that it imprints on your kids brain, in the same manner that a person's face would. If you say Dada everytime you hand the baby to dad, they will quickly associate the word with dad's face. I wouldn't trust anything that told me I could set my kids in front of the TV and leave them there. I'm too paranoid for that.

 

[patandchickens]

There are (a few) 2-3 yr olds who already learn to read on their own or through normal parental activities... doesn't take a video (hmph) if the kid is inherently ready and interested.

OTOH what on earth is the HURRY? I mean, why is it considered a good thing TO try to teach kids to read before they are ready? I cannot see anything good coming from that.

Well except for lining the pockets of people selling 'teach your baby to read' systems

JMHO,

Pat

 

[sufficientforme]

I have not used them but I think it looks really interesting, I did see brand new in box set that they had received as a gift advertised on Craigslist last week for 100.00 so it must be expensive. It was no longer posted in 2 days. Maybe you can find cheap on Ebay used.

 

[Javamama]

I'm of the "what's the hurry?" opinion too. I guess it's fine if you have enough time to try, but I already have enough balls in the air so it would probably frustrate me.

 

[Lil Chickie Mama]

I guess the consensus is "what's the big deal." I'd rather save the hundred bucks or however much it is and do it myself. As for too soon or what's the rush, well, there's no rush, but why not? If the mom has time and wants to, I don't see why not. Babies brains are growing and they WANT to learn, it's their job to learn and experience the world in whatever way they can. To me, I don't see how it's any different from teaching sign language which I am learning now so that when we get pregnant and have a baby I'll be ready. I want to further my child's communicative skills as much as possible. However, I do respect any parent that chooses not to as I remember learning to read so it must have been around 4-5 and I am a voracious reader and always have been. The important thing no matter what age they learn to read is making it a good experience IMHO.

 

[patandchickens]

As for too soon or what's the rush, well, there's no rush, but why not? If the mom has time and wants to, I don't see why not.

I can think of several very good (IMO) reasons why not:

1) too many kids and parents get really frustrated when the parents are trying to get the kids to do something they're just not developmentally ready for. Not only does this mess everyone up and create friction in family relationships, it also creates negative associations with being taught in general, and with the thing you're trying to teach in particular. Reading ESPECIALLY, it's a shame when kids have early negative experiences with.

2) if it doesn't work well, few people can resist the temptation to label (even just mentally) the child as "having problems learning X" and this label follows the child for years and years and is very unhelpful to further learning. Even the *child* sometimes gets the idea that he's not good at doing X, and that is SPECTACULARLY unhelpful to him in future years.

2) when reading is taught as a trick to a basically uninterested child, even when it succeeds it seems to often result in a kid who *can*, technically, read... but has no particular INTEREST in it. Again, with reading moreso than most things, it's terrible to have a kid start out turned-off from it.

3) would it not be better to have the child learning/doing things they are actively invested in, and are (by definition, therefore) developmentally-appropriate? Time spent with someone trying to teach a kid to read before they're ready is time NOT spent doing something ELSE.

Additionally, if a person nevertheless wants to teach their very young preschooler to read (or if the child is spontaneously interested in learning to read- which is a whole different kettle o' fish, and not a problem at all), VIDEOTAPES are probalby one of the WORST ways to teach reading. Teaching reading to an INTERESTED kid is pretty easy. You talk with them, and listen to them talk with you, and puzzle things out together. That way they acquire VOCABULARY, and a wide array of strategies for deciphering words. (Videos teach a very narrow vocabulary and narrow, limited strategies)

This is not just a lone bizarre divergent opinion - it is a fairly popular viewpoint among researchers and independant-minded teachers. For further discussion of the issue a quick google turns up things like
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/e...e-not-helped-by-reading-too-early-763182.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2007/nov/22/earlyyearseducation.schools
http://www.besthomeschooling.org/articles/david_elkind.html
and that's just a lazy sampling of the first google returns. Whole books have been written on the issue, a lot of them; your library probably has some of them.

Again, I am not in any way against kids learning to read young if they *on their own* want to. My just-turned-5-yr-old has been reading to some degree for a year now and can work his way through most documents that don't contain excessive technical or high-falutin' language... although I would point out that while his comprehension is good at the sentence level, he often does not get the more-complicated or deeper drift of a whole paragraph.

But, that's just because he *wanted* to figure out how to read. If he didn't want to, I would certainly be working the written word into our daily life (as if it isn't already ) but i wouldn't be *worrying* about him reading til he was in first or second grade (for which he would, in that case, almost certainly be homeschooled, since schools here expect ALL kids to start learning to read in kindergarten, which is just STUPID in my opinion because not all kids are *ready* at that age, hmph)

Research has generally shown that early childhood academic programs only help if the kids in question were from deprived backgrounds. For kids with a wide experience of life, and engaged talkative listening parents, and opportunities to try doing lots of things and pursue their interests, I really don't know of much in the way of evidence that early academics are helpful; and there are a number of studies and lines of evidence to suggest the opposite is more often true.

Don't overestimate the value of formal teaching, nor underestimate the value of all the other stuff kids are learning. What happens when you drop different things into your milk once the cereal is gone; where those animal tracks go and what made them; how to make banana bread; how to figure out how to turn on the light switch you're too short for and how does the switch make the light turn on, anyhow?; how many forks we'll need if we have two guests over for dinner; how to stack your boxes real high without them falling down when your brother whacks them. Etc etc. All sorts of things. And there is (or easily can be) reading, or reading-readiness, skills embedded in most of those.

"Haste makes waste".

JMHO,

Pat

 

[Lil Chickie Mama]

Pat, thank you for your post. I will look at the sites you posted. Mostly I started this thread because, like you, I was aghast at the idea that someone indeed would let the video do the teaching. But also out of curiosity if a child had the capability to read and/or comprehend at that age through any means of teaching. I believe that teaching reading and comprehension needs to be done by the parent at any age, and I agree that most of what a child learns isn't in formal education but in normal situations. I do plan to homeschool my kids but if a person was easily irritated at what they perceived as failures in their child, then that wouldn't be a good family to practice homeschooling or early teaching. Mostly I was just interested in applying the idea of a child reading that early because I would like them to be able to more fully participate when we read the Bible and such, but I don't expect them to be reading Shakespeare (or even a child's book on their own unless they wanted to). That being said, I did say, "The important thing no matter what age they learn to read is making it a good experience" so I would never expect someone to try or continue with a child that wasn't interested. If they aren't interested it can't be a good experience. This was just a question posed out of curiosity as I don't even have children yet and I didn't know if it was even possible for a child to read and/or comprehend that young. I am glad to get the varied points of view. Okay, that's all I'll say for now. Again, thank you for your post.

 

[patandchickens]

Thinking of this thread, out of curiosity I asked my just-turned-5 yr old at lunchtime, "what do you think was the most helpful thing, for helping you to learn to read?" He thought about it for a minute and said "Having you read to me, and read with me." I asked him in what way that was helpful -- he said "Because I learned about a lot of new words that way, and you can help get me unstuck when I'm not sure."

So I would guess that a good way of encouraging a child to read with you would be to just *do* it, probably with simplified kids' versions of biblical stories rather than the actual King James (or whatever) Version itself

I do remember that when Harry was just starting to read, he used to like to hunt for words he recognized, names especially, on the page. We mostly hunted for things like "Bob the Builder" and "Scoop" and "Muck" <g>, but no reason not to scan a page for apostles' names (or whatever) instead

Seriously, do read those links and find some books on the subject in your library, there really is a pretty good body of evidence that trying to actively teach academics (including reading) too young is in fact *counterproductive*.

Have fun,

Pat