Your Baby Can Read closes up shop

The companies behind Your Baby Can Read have, faced with daunting legal costs, gone out of business, according to this Facebook post and, now, the text on YourBabyCanRead.com:

FROM ALL OF US AT YOUR BABY CAN READ!
THANK YOU FOR YOUR LOYAL SUPPORT AND BEING SUCH GREAT CUSTOMERS!

For more than 6 years, Your Baby Can Read! has been enjoyed and appreciated by families world-wide as an innovative reading concept for babies and young children.

Regretfully, the cost of fighting recent legal issues has left us with no option but to cease business operations. While we vehemently deny any wrongdoing, and strongly believe in our products, the fight has drained our resources to the point where we can no longer continue operating.

To our thousands of loyal customers who have provided overwhelmingly positive feedback, and particularly to those who took the time to send written and video testimonials about the success stories of their children, we sincerely thank you for being such great champions of our products.

If you have questions regarding an existing order, please contact us at [email protected]. Until August 15, a customer service representative will be available to respond to your emails during business hours.

If you would like to purchase our products, you may be able to find them at www.Amazon.com.

Based on all available public information, including my analysis of a court filing, I sincerely believe that there was no case. Nevertheless, Your Baby Can Read was proving too successful for the comfort of people whose views and practices of early education the program threatens. I am sure that their “expert” testimony made it possible for this case to gain some legal traction. Still, apart from those who actually support baby reading, I have yet to encounter a single expert in a related area–reading methods, developmental psychology, preschool education, etc.–who has commented on a careful examination even of a single case of a child who was taught to read using Your Baby Can Read, and similar methods like Doman’s or dare I now add, Reading Bear. In short, the people trotted out as experts have no experience and hence no particular expertise in the phenomenon they comment on (baby reading). Sadly, however, such uninformed “expert” opinion can make a big difference in court.

I maintain that Your Baby Can Read played an important role in the very early reading ability of my first son, now six years old and reading chapter books meant for much older children. It is also an excellent and effective supplement to the program my second son, not yet two years old, is using. He is reading quite a few words now, including (but not limited to) those in Your Baby Can Read.

I will be very interested to learn what happens next with the company, the product, and Dr. Titzer. I wish them well, and I sincerely believe that, in time, they will be amply vindicated.


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7 responses to “Your Baby Can Read closes up shop”

  1. Kerileanne99

    I am heartbroken and unbelievably sad for so many children who will now most likely miss out on learning to read as toddlers, and truly am at a loss to understand how this can happen to a fantastic company and product. Thank you so much Dr. Titzer and co, that helped me raise a 2.5 year old reading at a phenomenally high level–and even more so for helping us to introduce her to a life-long love of learning in SO many areas!
    I truly believe that you will eventually be hailed as a pioneer and a hero!

  2. I am truly saddened by this news. I hold YBCR in the highest regard. This product started me on the Early Learning journey with my eldest daughter. My DD is almost 4 and now reads at a level of 8.8 to 9.2 year old and I credit YBCR for this amazing reading level. I hope in the future that Dr Titzer is vindicated for all of his work. Ijust wish I could help his side of the case, but there are already 1000’s of testimonials from parents but that is apparently not enough for the ‘experts’ to leave him and his company alone.

  3. GPC

    This is sad news. I wonder if they have any plan to make the videos available for free on YouTube or will they become ridiculously expensive to buy used.

    1. I wonder that myself. I have no idea.

  4. chrissy

    I love this program for my 3 year old. She can read now and it is what helped her start talking. For us that had been a stuggle because of her autism. I hope they are amply vindicated as well. I was getting them in single sets from walmart each time my daughter seemed ready for the next stage. I just ordered the last 2 volumes off of amazon. I am trully saddened to see them disappear from the shelves.

  5. As a language scientist who has studied reading and speech, I sympathize with parents who look for guidance on how to improve the quality of life for their children. The value of learning to read before schooling begins has not been resolved, and many reasons have been given for and against this idea. Many parents, however, report positive experiences with their children. One consideration is to ask why is reading so special that we have to debate whether or not it should be delayed until schooling begins or even later? We wouldn’t think of proposing this question for speech or advocate protecting the child from speech until they are ready. I have just written an article on the possibility of early published in the American Scientist, which is freely available to anyone.
    Massaro, D. W. (2012). Acquiring Literacy Naturally: Behavioral science and technology could empower preschool children to learn to read naturally without instruction, American Scientist, 100, 324-333.
    It can be read at
    http://www.americanscientist.org/issues/feature/2012/4/acquiring-literacy-naturally
    or downloaded at
    http://mambo.ucsc.edu/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/2012-07MassaroFinal2.pdf
    I hope you are able to read the article and think about this important issue for our children.

    1. Thanks for posting the link. I will certainly have a read!

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