Your Baby Can’t Really Read (and doesn’t need to)
Posted April 13th, 2011 by Susan LinnThe Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood has filed a Federal Trade Commission Complaint against Your Baby Can Read! for false and deceptive marketing. YBCR is a $200 video-based system that allegedly teaches babies as young as three months to read. The Today show did a great story on our complaint, and we’re already hearing from parents who have been duped by the company.
Reading experts from around the country agree that baby’s brains aren’t even developed enough to learn to read. Reading is more than memorizing what a word looks like on a flashcard—it requires comprehension.
Like other baby media companies, Your Baby Can Read exploits our natural tendency to want what’s best for our children. There is no evidence that babies learn anything—let alone a complex skill like reading—from videos. And in addition to conning parents out of $200, Your Baby Can Read’s false and deceptive marketing may be putting babies at risk.
The complaint is part of our ongoing effort to stop baby media companies from marketing their products as educational. Last year, we successfully persuaded the Walt Disney Company to stop marketing Baby Einstein as educational, and to offer refunds to parents who believed their claims.
Research has linked infant screen time to sleep disturbances and delayed language acquisition, as well as problems in later childhood, such as poor school performance and childhood obesity. If parents follow Your Baby Can Read’s viewing instructions, their baby will have watched more than 200 hours by the age of nine months—spending more than one full week of 24-hour days in front of a screen. Meanwhile, the American Academy of Pediatrics recommends no screen time for children under age two.
The last thing babies need is to be drilled with flash cards and to watch videos. It’s particularly worrisome that screen time takes away from the two activities known to be educational—time with caring adults and hands-on creative play. Babies learn in the context of loving relationships, and with all of their senses. Yet, 19% of babies under the age of one have a television in their bedroom and 40% of 3-month-olds are regular viewers of television. And we all know that screen time is habituating. The more time babies spend with screens, the harder it is for them to turn them off when they’re older.
If you bought Your Baby Can Read and you’re dissatisfied, or if you’re outraged on behalf of parents who bought the product, please click here to let the FTC know that you want Your Baby Can Read to stop its deceptive marketing and compensate parents who shelled out $200 believing they were doing the best for their children.
5 Comments
September 16, 2011 at 1:32 pm by Dieting and Children’s Health - SmartHealthShopYour Baby Can Read: Early Language Development System: Robert … Really thought the doctor’s plan of no other TV for the months the child was …. But now, even when I’m sitting with her, I can’t get her to pay attention for long
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June 27, 2011 at 11:54 pm by TraciI never bought this for my kids and never would. You child might have a massive vocabulary. But my two and three year olds are VERY smart children both have outstanding vocabularies and have never watched a minute of this. It is because I explain every unfirmiliar word with them. When they don’t know what a word means I explain it to them in their terms of understanding and in a few days they are using the word in correct context. Our parents didnt need $200 worth of dvd’s and flash cards to teach us to read, and assuming you understood the above context I’d say it worked for them why waste money on this?? Just saying!
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May 10, 2011 at 12:19 am by DSmithThis post sounds as if it written by one of the brainiacs working in one of our public school systems and has never bothered to watch these videos. “Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood” is nothing but a group of ambulance chasers. I especially like the use of the term ” Reading Experts”. Who exactly are these peolpe? Believe me, if you use these videos consistantly, your baby will read and comprehend what she is reading at a very early age. Thats been my experience. Of course these videos are not a substitute for one on one interaction with your baby(duh). My 13 month old not only has a massive vocabulary but teaches other toddlers new words.
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Marjorie Reply:
May 17th, 2011 at 12:22 pm
@DSmith, Two such experts are Dr. Nonie Lesaux, a child development expert at the Harvard University Graduate School of Education and Dr. Maryanne Wolf, director of Cognitive Neuroscience at Tufts University. At least, they were the ones quoted in the easily findable USA Today article on the topic.
Stop being so gullible. I am not sure how ‘massive’ a toddler’s vocabulary is, maybe you are counting every syllable sound she makes. My 5 year old and three year old are at the 98 percentile in language development (you can get evaluations like this cheap when your sister’s a developmental psychologist
), and I never plopped her in front of this garbage.
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This is interesting. My mom helps a lot with the childcare for my younger kid, and she was *so* excited about YBCR. She bought the package and plays it for my daughter pretty regularly. She knows I’d prefer less (no) screen time, but she was so thrilled with the idea that My Baby Could Read! Sigh. I’ll share this with her.
I think they don’t watch the DVDs much anymore, but play hide-and-seek with the flashcards, which I can live with. (I could’ve made them flashcards, but I am also not looking a lovely childcare gift horse in the mouth.)
Thanks for sharing this information!
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