Review: “Your Baby Can Read”

Here is my review of the Your Baby Can Read videos, as posted on Amazon.com.

Many people have found that Your Baby Can Read works, especially if it is used as part of a larger literacy program that includes plenty of reading to the child.  I found that it helped quite a bit with my first child.  Now, at age 4.5, he is able to decode my college philosophy books, and we regularly read and appreciate books like Charlotte’s Web and, recently, Old Yeller.

I have found over and over again that the critics of YBCR are people who think they know about how babies learn to read, but really do not.  By contrast, I, and the many parents I talk to who have used YBCR and other programs designed to teach babies to read, live every day with the results.  For us, it is not speculation.  We (many of us) see daily evidence that our kids are learning more than we knew they could learn.  You can read more about my story, including how we used YBCR, at larrysanger (dot) org (slash) reading (dot) html.

Since there are many reviews about this already, in the rest, I will mainly answer a few charges made about this program.  But first let me say that I’m giving this five stars because it actually works–or it can work, especially with other literacy support.

“It’s boring”: well, it’s not as fancy as your standard Disney Channel or PBS Kids fare.  If your family is used to looking at that stuff, it’s likely that you’ll find YBCR boring, and your kids might too.  But if you’re like our family and you basically don’t watch TV except for some DVDs, chances are your kid will find that this is great.  For what it’s worth, our little boy started watching this at 22 months and absolutely adored it, and demanded to see it daily (often more often, but we didn’t let him) for a few months.  He thought it was great fun.

“I don’t like the advertising”: you’re being asked to review the product, not the advertising.  I happen to agree that some of the advertising is obnoxious and over-the-top.  But the product is not.  In fact, the product itself is quite modest and unassuming.

“This is just a whole word program”: sadly, you’re right, for the most part.  There is some phonics material at the end of each disk, but not much.  And as much as I agree that this is a count against it, you can’t ignore the fact that the program works, as far as it goes.  In my opinion, it’s just important to supplement the program with phonics later on, that’s all.  YBCR can serve as a nice leg up.  Moreover, I should point out that there are plenty of parents who report that their children have learned to read phonetically using just YBCR and without phonics “intervention.”  That’s not what I personally recommend, but I don’t doubt that what they say can be done.

“My kid just learned the words in the video, and that’s not many”: well, yeah.  Did you really think that a program that is marketed to babies, toddlers, and preschoolers would, all by itself, cause such small tykes to read more than that?  On the other hand, isn’t it amazing that they are able to read that much?  And, more to the point, if this is absolutely all that you do to support your child’s literacy, then I would agree that your child will probably not learn to read.  You need to go farther.  It helps a lot to read boatloads to your child, holding your fingers under the words as you read them.  Doing phonics flashcards or some other little kid-accessible phonics program is also a good follow-up.  Playing with refrigerator magnets is a good idea.  But anyway, the point is that if you believe that simply plopping your child in front of a DVD, and doing little else to develop his literacy, will somehow cause him to read, then your problem is not really so much that you believe false advertising, your problem is that you misunderstood the advertising, the lengthy instructions to parents, and so forth.

YBCR was a great introduction to reading for our boy.  This product is getting a lot of attention for very good reason–not just because of the advertising.  Go to YouTube and search for videos of babies, toddlers, and preschoolers reading.  If you find out what those people did, you’ll get a better, more realistic idea of what a tool like YBCR can do for you.