Mar 22 2009
Your baby can read… who cares?
Having spent far too much time incapacitated, lying on the couch this week, I have had the opportunity to watch quite a few infomercials. My favorite is the cool one for the Cricut, that super neat paper cutter thingie that cuts out all these awesome shapes and stuff. I have gotten the chance to use one, and it really is as cool as the infomercial says.
But I digress…
Have you seen the infomercials for Your Baby Can Read?!
Rediculous.
Ludicrous.
A big, fat, ugh.
If you haven’t seen the Your Baby Can Read infomercials, here’s the jist:
Buy this pack of resources that includes flash cards, DVDs, and other crap, show it to your kid, and soon your 16 month old will be reading words and associating them correctly. By age three, they’ll be able to read big words (but, in reality, probably not know what they mean).
Gimme a freaking break, people!
Why, on God’s green Earth, does your baby need to read?
They will learn to read. Seriously, they will be taught to read in school. (At least last time I checked. Or, did they take “reading” out of school since I was last there?)
By all means, read with your kids. Interact with them. Pretty soon, you’ll find your three year old “reading” the words on the page of the book you read night after night. (Really, they’re just associating the pictures to the words they have memorized, but that’s a first step to reading!)
But please, don’t make them grow up faster by strapping them into a highchair or carseat and forcing them to look at stupid flash cards all day long. That has to be some kind of abuse.
Another thing I found absolutely absurd about the Your Baby Can Read infomercials are the company’s claims about why you should be teaching your baby to read.
It claims that your child will be more successful later in life.
Mmm kay, yeah. Because I’m pretty sure Bill Gates and Donald Trump learned how to read when they were two years old.
One preschool teacher claims that when she showed it to her “less privilaged” students, they learned more than they could have otherwise. Therefore, they are more likely to stay on this path of success.
I’m not even going to touch that one. I hope, for the children’s sake, that comment is true. But, I will guarantee that their future success and moving beyond being “less privilaged” has less to do with Your Baby Can Read and more to do with how they are nurtured throughout their early years and beyond.
So, my babies can’t read, but you wanna know what they can do?
They can bang the crap out of pots and pans. (Future drummers?)
They can make a super long Play-Doh snake. (Future sculpters?)
They can run really fast, jump really high, and not stop moving until waaay after bedtime. (Future Olympians?)
They can scream crazy super loud. (Future singers?)
And…
They can make me laugh harder than nearly anyone alive. (Future comedians?)
At any rate, I love my “dumb” kids that enjoy running around, giggling, and playing all day long. I love that they enjoy letting me read to them, and don’t hog the book to try and prove how smart they are. But most of all, I love that my kids are still kids. They have plenty of time to grow up and get super crazy smart. I’d like to cherish these sweet, silly times as much as I can right now.
I totally agree, Angel. Thank you!
First of all…I loove the Cricut infomercials…that machine is A-mazing!
In another life maybe I’d have time to scapbook and do fun crafty things like that. haha! And, speaking as a former Kindergarten teacher, most kids are not developmentally ready to read or even learn to read at 2 years old. Ofcourse, there’s those rare “child-genious” kids but otherwise, no. Working on letter names and sounds gradually is always good but let kids be kids, ya know! 
My questions are: Why are parents even thinking about introducing something like this to a toddler? Shouldn’t they be concentrating more on socialization and self-help skills? Has anyone done any extended studies on children who learn to read so young? I’d be interested to see what these children are like in elementary and middle school. Do they have social/emotional/behavioral problems? Their parents have to have higher than normal expectations for these children. So, what happens when they don’t succeed at something or don’t perform at the parents expectations. Do these children have a higher percentage of being diagnosed with some kind of emotional disturbance or possibly Autism/Aspergers syndrome? Could be interesting to see what happens to these kids in about 5-10 years.
totally agree!
I’ve seen a lot of these infomercials too lately.
*MAYBE* I could see myself falling for this as a first time mom, with FTM syndrome. I had FTMS bad. I totally wanted Sage to be the best at everything, have the best of everything, and felt it was a reflection on me.
I’m so glad I’ve outsmarted FTMS!
(I think you should write a post about FTMS, actually!)
Thank you ladies!
ckcramer- Excellent points, I have wondered the same thing.
Heather- That is a fantastic blog topic. It is on my list now!
I dont see a problem with it….as long as its not forced. There is nothing wrong with them learning things before they go to school as long as they enjoy it.
I taught both of my younger brothers to read while I was learning to read. I would just come home from school and play teacher with them. They loved it. Both of them knew how to read before they started school themselves…..what’s wrong with that?
nodoubt1- Certainly nothing is wrong with it, but what you’re describing isn’t what I’m describing in my post.