Suburban Reviews

In this day and age of Baby Einstein videos and educational toys, one thing is clear- we all want our children to reach their fullest potential. We start our children listening to classical music before they enter the world, we make sure our crib mobiles are black and white so our 3 day old infants can see them properly, and we start reading to them within weeks, all in the name of “smarter babies”. It’s not surprising then that there are actually videos on the market claiming to be able to teach these babies to read. Yes, you heard me, to read. The Infant learning Company, Inc is making such a claim with it’s Your Baby Can Read dvd series, and as part of the Parent Bloggers Network, I got to put them to the test.

Each Your Baby Can Read dvd comes with the dvd and a set of pull-out flash cards. The disk itself consists of sections for both parents and children. The parents portion explains how to use the video with the cards. I admit I was a little taken back when I viewed this section, as it’s creator suggests that to get the full effect, the video should be played 1-2x per day, and no other tv should be watched. At this point I started to laugh; the guy is obviously a first-time father.

(We all had those no-tv-and-only-educational-when-it-is ambitions with our firsts. By the third child, Dora rules the roost.)

I put the dvd in the first time not expecting a lot. After viewing the parent’s portion is seemed like it would be just a lot of words on the screen. Boy was I wrong! Instead I was shown videos that dare I say it, put the Baby Einstein series to shame. The words are there, shown first before the delightfully engaging clip of the animal, object, or action. We especially loved the animal ones; ‘pig’ is a very easy word to pick up, and the shot of the baby pigs nursing made my boys giggle uncontrollably. In between the narrators ask questions such as “Do you know what color the baby ducks are?” to keep the children interested. For my 4 and 2 year olds, I have to say this was the most truly interactive video, ever. It kept them watching and participating through the entire 30 minutes, no easy feat for a 4 and 2 year old!

The flash cards were also enjoyed, but admittedly not as much as the video. They liked the pictures, and didn’t mind sitting still for short sessions of reading the word and then viewing the picture. The way they are put together is a problem though. They are very durable, but one of them stuck for us, and I still do not know what the horse looks like, as we’ve not been able to open at that card at all. Other cards had minor sticking that we were able to open without breaking, and overall I thought they were well-made.

My 4 year old is I *think* starting to pick up a few words, but is very hit or miss. Sometimes he seems to recognize them, sometimes not. My 2 year old is not picking up any at all yet, but we’ve not been able to manage the twice a day viewing either, so it may just take longer when you are doing it a few times a week.

That’s not to say we got nothing out of it. In fact we had a very surprising outcome, in that they have turned out to be a wonderful speech therapy tool! My 4 year old has verbal apraxia, and has been in speech therapy for nearly two years. It has become second nature for us to incorporate sounding out words and having him repeat things in our day to day life, and this has become a wonderful supplement to that. When the narrator reads a word on the screen, my son will immediately repeat it back, and with him, repetition is key. In addition, my 2 year old would repeat everything his brother would say, so it ended up being great vocabulary practice for both of them.

I am not one to push educational toys and reading to your child the minute they are expelled from the womb, but as far as these things go, the Your Baby Can Read dvd sets actually have some value. Some kids will start recognizing words right away, some like mine may benefit more from the verbal vocabulary building parts, and still others may enjoy this as just a truly entertaining and worthwhile educational video. As long as you can take the instructions with a grain of salt, I would recommend these to anyone with small children. They really were a delightful find, and I thank Parent Bloggers Network for allowing us to be a part of this one, because I will be purchasing more of the dvd sets in the future.

Interested parents can find Your Baby Can read dvds and books on the Infant Learning Company website. Each dvd can be purchased for $14.95, or special muti-disk set prices are also listed. Either way they are well worth it!

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