Your Baby Can Read 1

I was impressed when at 10 months of age she started interacting/participating in the fun of the Volume 1 video she had been watching since she was 6 months old (for example, she would clap her hands in sync with the children to the song "If your happy and you know it, clap your hands"). However, my skepticism about the actual reading part of it grew as I periodically tried showing her large printed words to see if they meant anything to her, and this met with no reaction. Despite my doubts, I continued letting her watch the videos because she loved them so much, and I figured it was better than having her watch Barney or Telletubies. Maybe the reading part would simply take longer. There certainly was no harm in it, and I felt the videos could, at the very least, help her develop basic verbal skills if nothing else.

You can imagine the shock I was in a few weeks ago when, at 18 months of age, I started showing her mere words (no pictures or anything--as one of my periodic attempts to see if anything was "sticking"), and I realized that she could actually read them! My skepticism turned into amazement, and I literally started running/jumping around the room. This had a spiraling, contagious effect. As she witnessed my excitement, she literally started jumping off her toy horse and wanted to demonstrate her knowledge even more, which made me grow more amazed and excited-as did she in response to my enthusiasm, and so on.

A few days after I witnessed this amazing event, the Infant Learning Company, who makes the tapes ..., happened to call me to inquire about how my daughter was doing with the tapes. I told them what a coincidence it was that they would call because I just had noticed the astounding impact of their videos. After speaking for awhile they later asked if I would be willing to talk to Good Morning America, who was interested in doing a story on this. The producer from the show called me, and in a few short days we were off on a plane to New York to appear with Diane Sawyer on Good Morning America on March 6, 2002 --along with Dr. Robert Titzer, who developed the tapes, another family who experienced the amazing results, and the show's parenting contributor.

The show segment went very well, but due to tight programming that day, we were only given 5 minutes of air time, which barely touched on the topic. All of us who appeared on the show felt that the public had been shortchanged in learning about something that could have such a profound impact on society. The public needs to be informed about these type of early learning experiences to demonstrate that young children (mere babies) are capable of far more than we would ever give them credit for.

Typically we are teaching reading at ages 5 and 6 in this country, and by the time children are 8 years old, only 40% can read independently (according to government statistics). An awareness of early learning topics such as this could help combat illiteracy in our society. Much research has been done on this topic in the last several years which indicates the incredible window of opportunity that exists for learning in the first three years of life, after which it starts to decline. It is a "use it or loose it" proposition, and the earlier we nurture a child's rapidly developing brain, the better. It is much easier (not to mention less costly) to prevent societal problems such as illiteracy than try to correct them after the fact.

There are some highly intelligent, successful adults in our society today that were fortunate enough to have an early introduction to reading. ... I believe Dr. Titzer's interactive videos have been an excellent start to this process (which obviously needs to be expanded upon by parents-this is just a beginning), and I am most grateful to him for developing the "Your Baby Can Read" series.

...


good concept , bad execution   June 18, 2002
Sajil Unni (Indianapolis, IN)
19 out of 20 found this review helpful

Unlike a lot of parents, I have never been comfortable with the concept of sitting a baby/toddler in front of a tv to watch even "educational" shows. I really don't need my baby to be an "Einstein" or a "genius". But I was absolutely stunned one day when he was 16 months old and I doodled his name on the Magna-Doodle (as I had done a hundred times when I was bored) and he pointed to it and said his name! My husband said to write a bunch of words on the Magna-Doodle and see if he could accurately point to his. He did this 7 times in a row (on videotape!). A month later I saw a segment on Good Morning America about this series. I was intrigued and thought it could enhance a skill he was already working toward. Because I had my doubts though I checked it out of the library instead of buying it.
The video features Dr. Titzer's daughters and a couple of other children. It shows words followed by some video footage of the word in action. It also features the songs "If You're Happy" and "Head and Shoulders". My son loves watching other children and animals, so in that respect it was very good. However great the concept is is kind of overshadowed by the poor execution. The words seem thrown on the screen in a somewhat haphazard fashion. For example the word "climbing" could be followed by the followed by the word "antelope" or "yes". I would have preferred there to be some kind of categories that the video could have consistantly stuck to, like animals or actions or objects. Another problem I had with the video is that some of the words seem beyond the reach of a 5th grader, much less an infant, such as "orangatan" and "hippopotamus". Also some words are not adequately conveyed by the video footage. For example, the word "smiling" shows a 4 month old with an ambiguous smile.
After watching it a few times I realized that the problems I had with the tape were getting on my nerves. So what I decided to do was make a home video personalized to my son. I printed out often used words like "milk" and "daddy", focused my camcorder on them for a few seconds and then showed a few seconds of the the word in action. I did record the two songs of my tv as well.
It's about a 15 minute video and my son adores it. He has memorized the sequence of the video and always shouts out the words, I don't know if it's necessarily because he's reading them however. What I've realized is that this kind of reading is just a recognition skill just like being able to name animals or objects. It's not really reading with phonics where they would be able to discover new words using the skills they already have. I consider this more along the lines of a "party trick" like being able to make animal sounds than an indication of academic intellect. I've found that I like active learning where he gains an understanding of a concept through repetitive real world experiences rather than the passive learning that comes from sitting in front of a screen for entertainment. At 21 months our son knows fourteen animal noises, ten colors, can recognize the numbers 0 - 9, and is potty trained. But even more importantly, he is a loving, affectionate child who is (mostly) well behaved.
I believe that a child is genetically preprogrammed to be as smart as they can possibly be. There's not a lot you can do to make them a genius if they just do not have the ability to be one. But you can skew the parameters of their innate intellect by providing an environment of loving positive reinforcement. A video can never be a substitute for your attention.


Not if s/he won't watch...   February 27, 2001
15 out of 18 found this review helpful

Of all of the now, numerous early-childhood development tapes out there, this is one of the least engaging to my now 14 month-old daughter. I didn't notice anything particularly innovative in the format. There are live-action clips that illustrate the word, the word is pronounced, given in the context of a sentence or two, and the word is displayed with an arrow showing how it is read. Intermittently there is a song sung by kids with the lyrics displayed on the bottom with the arrow (instead of a bouncing ball) indicating the words as they are sung. We have an extensive library of these developmental tapes, and this is one of our least favorites. As I recall, some of the tapes by Bee Smart Baby and Small-fry Productions videos make the connection between the spoken, demonstrated and written word - and these are more interesting, as well. There is nothing magical about this tape and its claim to teach babies to read - recognize a few words, maybe - IF they watch it. But the 'if' is the biggest obstacle, since the video is just plain boring.


Video taught my daughter to read at 13 months!   November 26, 1999
11 out of 12 found this review helpful

I was skeptical of the video when I first heard about it. I bought it for my daughter at 5 months and at 13 months she read her first word - "catch" and could read many more right away. The video IS geared towards children. Yes, some harder words are used, but children are smarter than we give them credit for. My daughter can read those harder words as easily as "hi". The video is fun for children and I highly reccomend both volumes and the book.