A new tool for Max

Tony and I got the “Your Baby Can Read” (link) set for Max. I know this is somewhat controversial so please don’t tell me that we need to let our child be a child and so on. We thought long and hard before deciding to try this program on him.

I thought I would give occasional updates and opinions of the program as we are doing it.

This is everything that we got with the program.

This is all we are using for the first month.

Yesterday we got it and I put the “starter DVD” in for him after I read some basic things about the program. The DVD is about 22 minutes long. Max watched it for about 11 minutes before he got tired of it and wanted to do something else.

I then read in the information provided with it that you should darken the room slightly and take all toys and easy distractions away from his line of sight when watching the DVD.

So this morning I did that and Max did much better!

The way the program works is I watch the DVD with Max and do the activities with him. For instance when it says “arms up” I put up my arms. He is suppose to watch the DVD 1-2 times a day. I am starting him out on twice a day figuring that would be good to get a good start on the program.

We also have a book, and flash cards that I use with him at different points during the day. Today is the first real day of using these and I have found that I play with Max a bit then use a couple of flashcards or a few pages of the book and then go back to play. There is also a flashcard that you can write your own word on with a dry erase pen.

The program states that he is to watch this starter DVD and do the starter things for one month. This would put us at 2 days past getting into Washington. Then we do the DVD #1. We do that for 2 months. Then DVD #2 for 2 months, then DVD #3 for a month and the review DVD for a month. The way I figure by February we should clearly be able to see if this program is working as we will have went through the whole thing by then.

Max just woke up otherwise I would go into the thought processes behind why they say this works.

Edited to add later on in the day…
They say this will work because the child is seeing a small portion of words for a while then once they understand how language is written then you introduce them to a TON of other words. So you make the written language as common as the spoken language. At least that is my understanding of things. Also Max will be hearing the word, seeing the word and often doing the word. So many areas of his brain will be processing a single word. This will make words meaningful and not as abstract.

I went through the video again with him this afternoon. He was tired (refused to sleep, little stinker) however he did wave at the right time (well after the word wave). So hopefully there are somethings connecting in his brain.

Oh one more thing. Tonight Tony went out to a talk that was being held on “Life” so Max and I were all by ourselves. I happened to turn on the radio when getting Max ready for bed and of coarse we only heard Michael Jackson. Well Max started dancing while holding on to the side of his crib. This is a huge deal for me (and Tony if he was here) because we were really looking forward to watching the triplets dance. Now finally we have our little boy starting to do it.

I will update tomorrow (if at all possiable) after his peditrician appointment.

Jennifer