Academic Acceleration - Our Experience: IN THE BEGINNING

Growing up in Europe, I had learned to read before school (my mother taught me), so when my son was born, I naturally assumed I would do the same for him. So I bought a lot of the classics (in English and French because we are a bilingual family) and started to populate our toddler library for the future little prince. This included 'The Cat in the Hat', and other Dr. Seuss Classics, as well as Le Roi Babar (French Edition) and others, which I ordered directly from Amazon France. But, not to put the cart before the horse, we also got a lot of what I felt were good baby toys.... the kind that encouraged open ended play, no electronics, and taught basic concepts: the 'Earlyears Curiosity Cube', Baby Einstein Bendy Ball', the 'B. Toulouse Lap-Trec Magnetic Sketcher', 'Educo Mazes', the 'Imaginarium 5-Way Giant Bead Maze', the 'Woodpecker Baby Walker from Plan Toys', the 'Wonderworld Musical Tree', the 'Wonderworld Rolling Rainbow Activity Toy', 'Learning Resources Jumbo Magnetic Numbers/Operations', 'Learning Resources Jumbo Lowercase Magnetic Letters', 'Jumbo Uppercase Magnetic Letters', etc.

But the most valuable item I got was the 'Your Baby Can Read Program'. This is the review I originally published on it:

'It seems that few subjects related to child upbringing stirs people's passions like early childhood education, except maybe the Ferber versus attachment parenting discussion, and the breastfeeding versus formula discussion. I am not a child development expert, but I am a foreign-born scientist who got her doctorate in this country, therefore in a language that was not my native tongue, and which I learned during my early teens. My mother taught me to read before school, using her own method, which as I vaguely recall was a combination of phonics, constant exposure to books, and no TV. Is this why I was able to pursue advanced studies in a foreign country? I don't know, but I do recall getting straight As pretty much through school. I am accomplished, but I know many people who are a lot more accomplished than I am, economically and otherwise.

When I had my baby (a boy, now 10 month old), it was a no-brainer (no pun intended) for me to teach him to read early, i.e. before school. After all, isn't reading the key to learning anything down the line? And maybe some children can just pick it up by osmosis, but for most, you have to teach them. Your Baby Can Read was just a tool, which was more convenient than making my own word cards, such as described in the Doman method (Teach your baby to read), which was first published in the 70s, I believe. There are many other great methods out there (Brillkids, Monkee See, etc, ), and all of them will work if you actually put in the effort, which needs to be substantial and consistent, but the rate of success will also depend on your child's natural abilities (that's right, not everyone is an Einstein), your child's gender (studies shows that girls are more verbal, and that by 16 months they know about 50 words, versus 30 for boys), whether your child lives in a bilingual household and has to learn more than one language, and the general quality of the environment your child is in. None of these methods involve plopping the child in front of the video as a baby sitter but requires you to interact with your child during the video and to reinforce the video's content with print material, and by other frequent exposures to words, letters, etc. The debate about children memorizing the words versus learning phonics is absurd in my opinion: Of course children are memorizing the words at first, like they might memorize letters, numbers, colors, and everything else that make up the basic fabric of life. You have to start somewhere and studies have shown that very young children (babies) learn through whole word recognition (right brain) and older toddlers start learning by phonics (left brain), but one doesn't preclude the other. All I know is that by constant exposure to something, you learn it and you start discerning the patterns (a famous Russian proverb states that "Repetition is the mother of learning"). I also know that children (younger than 4) in bilingual households learn both languages as their native language, and that they lose this ability as they get older, so without pandering to Dr. Titzer, it is pretty obvious that young children are particularly good at acquiring language skills in ways that is unparalleled in later years.'

and I recently published this update:

'If used as instructed, it works. We started with my son as an infant. He started recognizing sight words at 7 months. By 13 months, he could recognize many, many words (in two languages). We were done with this program, so we got Hooked on Phonics next, but he had already figured phonics out, due in part to this intensive exposure to the written language early on. Now he is 3 years old and reads at a 3rd grade level (in two languages). I cannot even begin to imagine what the FTC suit is about. Of course, a baby will not sound out words (will not read out loud), but a baby will recognize and correctly identify written words. THEN as expressive language develops, a toddler will read words out loud (my son read his first book out loud when he was 23 months old), and will be years ahead of other children at that point. The great thing about reading early is that reading is how you learn about other things. It is not just the reading that is accelerated, but the comprehension as well.

Would you like proof? You can watch this video of intermediate results at

After my son finished this program, we also used Little Readers (Brillkids) and Little Math from the same company. Most of all, we really enjoyed the Brillkids forum, which was full of parents from all over the world who believed in early education.

That year, Joey also participated in the Infant Swimming Resource Program, and he did really well with that.