Please Don't Teach Your Baby to Read-- At Least Not with that Product
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11 November, 2010
14 Comments
In the morning, I turn on the television to catch the early news while I get ready for work. Often there is an infomercial on about, the Teach Your Baby to Read program. I’m a big believer in teaching young children to read and have done a certain amount of research and development on family involvement and parent teaching, so I’m interested, especially in a program that promotes itself as being produced by a “scholar” in the field.
As much as I want parents to guide their children’s early reading, this is a program I would not recommend; in fact, I would even discourage its use. It is just not the right way to go. Parents could do better things with their money and their time, including actually helping their kids in ways that could get them reading before they start school.
The National Early Literacy Panel conducted a thorough review of research on early interventions (implemented any time between birth and kindergarten). We found no research on this program, and I did a quick check for newer studies recently, and that came up zilch as well. In other words, there is no evidence that this program works.
But isn’t the creator a scholar in this field? Well, it appears that Dr. Robert Titzer does have a Ph.D., though he apparently has never done any work on literacy at any level (the four papers he has published in his career seem to not have much to do with any aspect of teaching babies or anyone else to read).
What troubles me more than the lack of research (most programs lack research) and the lack of credentials (you don’t need good credentials to come up with a good idea), is the lack of correspondence with what we know about teaching children to read.
We know that decoding-based programs give kids a clear learning advantage, and that such teaching can profitably begin as early as age 3 (perhaps earlier, but let’s get some studies on that before plunging ahead). Memorizing words does have a role to play in kids’ learning, but it is a relatively small one. Nevertheless, Teach Your Baby to Read instead of helping kids to understand the alphabetic system and to develop phonological awareness and decoding skills, puts its major initial focus on word memorizing. It’s not harmful to teach words like that, but that isn’t the most effective way to go.
We know that children need to develop a lot of language ability during these early years. The National Early Literacy Panel found that early language development was particularly important in later reading comprehension development. Focusing children’s attention on such a narrow aspect of learning so early on shows a real lack of priorities.
I started working with my own daughters on reading on the days that they were born. I read a lot to my children during those early years, as did my wife. We sang to them to, and told stories to them, and played language games. By the time they were 3-years-old we were writing down their “stories” and reading those back, and we were teaching them letters and sounds (and, yes, some words, too). We got them writing their own names and trying to write stories, and so on. Both girls were able to read before they entered kindergarten.
Parents if you are willing to spend $200 on your children’s literacy development then buy some books (and supplement these with what you can get from the library), magazines, writing materials, letter blocks , etc. But invest more than your money. Instead of locking your child up in a play pen and turning on a DVD (yeah, they really do that), read to them, talk to them, sing with them, carry them around the house explaining everything to them.
When they are toddlers and can talk so much that you are going a little out of your mind, try teaching them some letter names. By the time they are three you can spend a little time each day ( more if their attention allows) working on letters and sounds and words, but just a little (when they wander away, time is up).
Reading is more than just memorizing words; it requires decoding—and that is, decoding words you do not already know how to read. Reading is more than just decoding, it requires decoding text towards comprehending the message. The babies in the commercials are cute, but they are not reading by any definition that I know.
11/11/2010
I read your post and I also read your biography. I felt the need to respond to your note and hope I am doing so with the utmost respect.
I think it’s quite possible that you do not know a great deal about this program. I say this because you believe that the program is only teaching sight words and nothing else is being learned. I have two nieces who learned to read as babies with Your Baby Can Read and I am so impressed with it that I have given it as a gift to my expecting friends.
I have seen the kids grow with the program and I can tell you it is just amazing to watch. When the kids are quite young, they begin doing the actions in the videos. Even very little ones get really excited and try to do the actions when the word and word meaning are shown on the screen. Later, when the kids are older, they try to say the words as they come up on the screen. Before my niece’s first birthday, she was saying the words when she saw the words on the screen. And, she knew the meanings of the words. I believe she actually learned to talk early because she was trying to say the words in the videos. When the volume on the TV was turned down, she said the words out loud, showing us that she was sight reading the words. But later the most incredible thing happened; she could read words she had never seen before! In fact, she could sound out any word you put in front of her! She had picked up on the patterns of the language. And her spoken vocabulary was also growing by leaps and bounds. She seemed to have an interest in words (both spoken and in print) that I had never seen before in such a young child. As she got older, her reading improved at a fast rate. She read many books at an age when most children are not reading at all! She is older now and doing quite well in school. Her sister learned the same way.
I am not very happy about your comment about locking children up in playpens and turning on the TV. This sounds like lazy parenting and certainly never happened with the kids I know who used the program. In fact, if you had a copy of the videos and books, you would see that the parents are encouraged to talk to their children and to expose them to written language in their everyday lives. I really don’t think that the parents who want to teach their children early on are the parents you refer to with this remark. The kids are not stuck in front of the TV. The videos are pretty short and the kids I know love them!
Can I send you a video clip of my friend’s daughter (now 3 years old)? She learned to read with Your Baby Can Read. She read her first word out loud at 13 months and was soon sight reading everything. I understand the skepticism, but SEEING her reading progression IS BELIEVING! Maybe the experts should really check into this further before being so critical!
11/15/2010
Thanks so much for this post. People ask me about this product all the time, and I am so glad that I can now point them to your excellent analysis of why it's better to buy books, get a library card, and do all the practices you mention instead. I always hope that Catherine Snow is right when she said she believes that "anyone who takes the trouble to study or teach reading, from whatever perspective, is interested in improving the lives of children." So I'll hope the creators of this product are so, just not well-informed about reading research. And I'll also hope even harder that many parents see this post.
11/15/2010
These comments are great. Thanks very much.
Anonymous didn't like much of what I wrote about this program, but she was wonderfully civil about it (something to be greatly appreciated these days!).
I have no doubt that her children are doing great with literacy and with school. The question is, is it because this program is so terrific or is it that she is so terrific? I vote for the latter, and in fact, just came across a recent study indicating that babies apparently don't learn much from such videos. Again, I fully support the idea of teaching young children to read and have no doubt that this parent accomplished it (even with this material), but I would not expect the same results with everyone.
She didn't like my description of locking the youngster in the playpen, but that is based on the program recommendation that the child's interest should be captured by placing him/her in a playpen with no toys while the videos play.
As for Diana's (also very) positive comment: I fully agree with Catherine Snow on that point, and Anoynymous's note above is a good illustration of that. This is clearly a parent who cares deeply about her children and who is trying to do the best things for them (and it sounds like it may be working out fine for her kids). However, Psychological Science just published a study by Judy DeLoache, University of Virginia, finding that children did not learn the words with 4 weeks of regular use of the product and that parents who enjoyed the product thought it was more effective than did other parents.
5/31/2011
Dr. Shanahan, thanks for your analysis. I am blogging on the subject, and I've just written about my experience with the program (and teaching my toddler to read in general) at http://site.beaniedesigns.com/blog/teach-your-baby-to-read/. Now my task is to take the other side and find reasons to support waiting to teach your child to read until school age (or at least not worry if you're not actively teaching reading to your toddler). I'm wondering if you can point to any studies that support waiting to learn reading. We had wonderful success with our son and reading has been such a joy for us as a family, but I understand a lot of parents have been made to feel they are not doing a good job if they choose not to pursue this with their baby.
What Are your thoughts?
Leave me a comment and I would like to have a discussion with you!
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