How Did You Find Out About Infant Education?

[mom2bee]

When did it first occur to you?

I remember being about 5 years old, I was on the front porch, doing Hooked On Phonics, thinking how bored I was and how I wished I'd learned to read as a baby at the same time that I learned to talk so that the work would just be easy. When my baby brother was born, I tried to convince my parents to teach him how to read as a baby so he wouldn't be bored with school as he got older and then he could just know. They brushed me off and told me it couldn't be done but for some reason or another, I NEVER believed them. I have 7 younger siblings and 4 young cousins, all of whom I proposed at least 2 or 3 times that we teach them how to read and or do basic math as infants. I have 2 sets brothers and cousins who are the same age. (5 yo brother. 5yo cousin. 7 yo brother. 7yo cousin)

When they were born within months of each other I remember calling my cousins mothers on the phone and telling them about my plan, I had 2 different methods of teaching a baby to read and would mail them the instructions for one of them if they wanted and I would use the other method, and we could compare notes every week to see which way was working better and if we needed to, we could switch up the methods at 1 year old.

I remember I was about 13 and 15 during those times but no one ever took me seriously and my mom never allowed me to experiment on my younger siblings. .

I felt SO vindicated (And a little jealous!) when I saw the commercials for YBCR a few years ago, because I'd planned to design and patent my own method for this "miracle method" when I was 19 to pay for college. Lol.

Anyway, so I guess you can say I have been a believe almost all my life, but sadly I've yet to have any children of my own but I greatly look forward to educating my children from birth.

As a child, I always wanted to understand arithmetic and speak Spanish, as I struggled SO MUCH with arithmetic and I really wanted to learn Spanish but my mom wouldn't teach me. My siblings were so good with Math in general and even though I was a grade ahead, I never really UNDERSTOOD what was happening, and was always confused in math. I vowed that I'd teach my babies how to do it so that they'd understand, because I never did.

I remember having the epiphany that sometimes you "understand" a thing without any effort because I spoke very good, grammatically correct English all my life and could intuit the meaning of almost any word from context clues, but I never really understand my grammar lessons as a child. I used to wish that I could understand math the same way that I did English, even if I wasn't very good with grammar terminology.

I really got into researching infant education when I taught my 6yo brother how to read this past summer in 10 weeks. I taught him so that he'd know how to read in 1st grade.  He was reading very well at the beginning of 1st grade, but because he doesn't practice daily his reading has gone down and now I'm working to improve his reading and my 3rd grade sister needs remedial reading lessons (she reads worse than the 6yo) and all the drama we go through trying to get them to read has inspired me to by pass all this crap and just do infant education....

[nhockaday]

I always knew the importance of doing things like reading and exposing a baby to different stimuli, but it really set in when I took developmental psychology in college. I had a great teacher who really explained a lot about the brain and different things to do to stimulate it. I got pregnant that semester and I started doing more research of my own.

[TeachingMyToddlers]

I heard of Baby Signing with ASL from a friend of a friend who's little girl was very bright. I started the BST videos as 3.5 months or so and DD watched them daily. I didn't think anything was sticking and played YBCR sometimes when I was desperate and needed to distract DD (hubby left for 7 months when DD was 3.5, work related, and I found I was expecting #2 about a month after he left  ). I had little faith in YBCR in general.

At 13 months DD had a signing explosion when my hubby asked her all the signs from random things in the video and we realized she knew them all, they just never came up in conversation and I honestly never thought to test her. I assumed she didn't know.  When I realized she mastered the BST series, I went down to the local teacher's store and they recommended the preschool prep series. I bought one or two DVDs and some books and she mastered them so quickly that I had to buy the rest of the set. And in that time we also started YBCR consistently and progressed to Signing Time as well which she was also learning very quickly. I chose these programs because they were pretty mainstream and it was all I knew about. I had no idea other things like Doman even existed.

At that point I had no idea what to do with her next. She was almost through with YBCR and we were running out of material. A second trip to the teacher store was useless, I asked an employee for advice on what to do next and they blew me off. So I went home and got on google, stumbling on the name "Glenn Doman" and BrillKids kept popping up again and again on my searches, but I was sure it was a scam website.  When I ran across the BK youtube videos, I decided I'd better look a little more closely.

[aangeles]

My husband and I saw a YBCR infomercial when Ella was 2 months old. I was pretty sure it was a scam, while my hubby said, "Well, worse case scenario is we are out 200 bucks, BUT what if it works?!" It took him about a month to convince me but we eventually bought the whole package complete with flap books and sliding flashcards. He diligently showed the videos to Ella once a day and, as soon as he came home from work in the evening, he would read her the flap books and show her the flashcards. I was still unconvinced - until one time when Ella was 9 months old, she was watching YBCR but I did not realize the TV was on mute, she proceeded to use ASL to sign almost every word as it came on the screen even before the corresponding picture or video came on. I thought, she must have memorized the order of the words in the video. My hubby took out the flashcards and asked her at random (had never heard of the "no testing" rule at that time  ), and, needless to say, she knew her words! You couldn't imagine how smug my husband looked as he was thoroughly vindicated!    I then started to teach her to read Chinese using Baby Learns Chinese. After a few months, she had mastered all the chinese words in the 6 volumes and I was at a lost as to what to do next. I started researching and googling YBCR and baby reading, came across Brillkids and LR, and the rest, as they say, is history. 

[kizudo]

I've "always" known about signing with babies and was quite confident that I was going to implement it with any children that I had.  We started that (watching videos and signing everywhere we could) when our son was 8 months old. 

When he was about 10 months old I saw a YBCR commercial (being a traditional classroom teacher I thought it was the most ridiculous thing I had ever seen).  After about two months of researching it (general searches in google - the good, the bad, the indifferent) we decided to try it.  At month 13 we started showing the YBCR videos and I made up MASSIVE flashcards (a poster board cut in half lengthwise) to hold up when we showed the signing videos (I sat beside the TV and flashed them while the video was being played).

One of my searches led me to a review here on BrillKids, so after implementing YBCR for a few weeks I remembered this site and came back to it - that's when the world exploded for me!  BOOM CRASH AND SIZZLE!  It was like fireworks!  Every thread I opened had something valuable for me to learn about infant learning - I became addicted to this site and learning all that I could.

[lzp11]

I am an ex Doman baby!

My mum taught me to read many years ago (don't ask me the exact date!) using home-made flashcards.  I think it was quite an unusual thing to do in those days so I'm really proud of her as she had no online support like I do and yet she did it so well.  She made her own simple kit based on words I was interested in and she says I could pick out words before I could talk.  I think I was reading independently by about 3.  She is quite amazed by all the high-tech early learning options there are nowadays (YBCR, LR etc)!  When I think about that it reminds me to keep things simple and fun and not try to do too much all at once.

Anyway, I always had a huge love of reading throughout my childhood and I was inspired to do the same with my own daughter.  Particularly because I had such a great relationship with my mother.  We became really close and I'm sure that early education was part of that.  She always believed in me, encouraged and supported but never pushed me and I do my best to show these qualities to my family too.

[mom2bee]

I am an ex Doman baby!

My mum taught me to read many years ago (don't ask me the exact date!) using home-made flashcards.  I think it was quite an unusual thing to do in those days so I'm really proud of her as she had no online support like I do and yet she did it so well.  She made her own simple kit based on words I was interested in and she says I could pick out words before I could talk.  I think I was reading independently by about 3.  She is quite amazed by all the high-tech early learning options there are nowadays (YBCR, LR etc)!  When I think about that it reminds me to keep things simple and fun and not try to do too much all at once.

Anyway, I always had a huge love of reading throughout my childhood and I was inspired to do the same with my own daughter.  Particularly because I had such a great relationship with my mother.  We became really close and I'm sure that early education was part of that.  She always believed in me, encouraged and supported but never pushed me and I do my best to show these qualities to my family too.

Wow! A doman-baby! You're probably about to become something of a celebrity on these boards, because a lot of the parents are anxious to hear from someone who's been "through ALL the paces".

Would you mind telling us a bit more about your school days? Do you feel like you benefited from early reading in any special way?
Where you "advanced" or "ahead" in school? What was the transition like for you when you went to school?
Did your mom do other programs with you and if so which ones?
Do you plan to do more with your daughter than your mom did? (ie reading AND math or reading AND EK)

[momagain]

I don't remember how I found out about it.  I obviously didn't get how important it was to follow through though as I didn't really use it with my oldest children.

So I started doing flashcards (ala Doman) with my daughter for common words, big words, etc when she was almost 3.  She was also learning phonics.  She figured a LOT out on her own.  I was just supplementing to "fill in gaps."  I'm not sure I really did much.  By 3, she was reading small chapter books (Charlotte's Web).   One wish: I should have continued with a systematic phonics program. 

By the time my younger one was a toddler, we had some interested in adopting a little boy with CP (from Russia).  My own son had some issues due to oxygen deprivation and possibly a few other things.  Anyway, as I was researching speech acquisition for children with CP, I saw that many school-aged kids with CP learned to talk by learning to read!  Well, would it work with a non-verbal toddler?  I made the cards and started at 22mo (my son finally said mama that month!).  In 2months, my son could read 70 words.  We used sign and speech.  His articulation was very bad still, but he took off verbally.  We used sign and speech for a few years. 

I played with the math cards with him also, but....and I didn't do the EK.

Unfortunately, I just didn't stick with it.  Mostly, it filled a desire for me rather than it being a systematic situation for them. My son had a great deal of trouble learning to read for real and wasn't fluent until far past the average age.  I decided that if I ever got to parent again (a hope for a long time), I would not take a chance with another child struggling like he did.

So now I'm getting to start over and I'm so excited to really do this.

[ariel]

Hi everyone!  Great to hear how everyone found out.  I searched a lot when I was pregnant with my daughter but somehow didn't reach to Brillkids.  I heard about Doman books but since Amazon lacked reviews, I only put them as favorite and moved on.  I learned books teaching to a 2 year old to read and I planned to do just that.  I did order a signing kit to learn signs to teach.  I also tried to learn about how babies brains develop and type of games you can play with them to develop their cognitive ability.  After my daughter was born, first three months passed trying to adjust as I was also attending grad school, then around 5th month I started to research where I left off.  I tried to learn more about YBCR and Doman.  I found childandme.com with Doman techniques.   After many searches I came across Brillkids forum.  I had heard of YBCR before but 200 bucks seemed like such a waste and when I researched, I learned that I could do the same thing at home with flashcards, I skipped the kit.   

Similar to Mom2Bee, as growing up, I just wondered why some kids are much smarter than others and I think it is unfair to say that it is because of genes.  I just kept my eyes open when I heard on tv anything about developing children's brains and hoped to try different things for my daughter.  Even though, I did well at school, I still always wished I could do puzzles easily or calculate math without calculator.   Maybe, my daughter will      

Good luck to all of ya!

[DadDude]

I had always planned to homeschool my kids, and my plan was to teach them as much as I could, without actually forcing them to learn.  That is probably why I bought How to Have a Smarter Baby, I think at a bookstore.  This book turned out to be a dud.  I don't know if it had much of an impact on H., but I was not terribly impressed with the recommended methods, although I did try some when he was between 2 and 8 months or so.  I also bought him lots of board books beginning around 4-6 months.  We also picked up various "Baby Einstein" and other similar videos from Babies R Us and elsewhere.  But I don't think, at the time, I had anything beyond a vague idea about "infant education" in the sense we all understand it.

I knew that some kids learn to read by age 3 or 4, and vaguely I recall thinking that it would be great if I could get H. to read that early.  But I hadn't even heard about YBCR, or Doman, or that babies could read.  I mean, it was completely ignorant of that as even a suggestion, let alone a real possibility.  I figured that probably the best thing I could do for him would be just to read a LOT.  (I think I was 100% right about that.  This is more important for future educational outcomes, in my opinion, than being able to read/decode early.)

I was totally bowled over when I discovered he knew most of his ABCs by age 18 months (that would be because of all the ABC books, videos, and manipulatives we had used up to that point).  I got online and started searching for information about when kids learn their ABCs, and I was amazed that some kids learn them as early as 12-14 months, and learning them by 24 or 36 months is not very unusual.  This made something click--I was thinking, well, if a child can learn ABCs so much earlier, then what else can they learn earlier?  So I started reading online more generally about very early education, and at some point I started investigating the question what the earliest age is at which a kid can learn to read.

I don't know what website I saw first, but soon I figured out that there were a bunch of videos of babies reading were on YouTube.  I was completely amazed.  I hadn't even considered the possibility.  But I couldn't take it very seriously.  I watched many of those videos, very closely, and using them managed to convince myself that those little kids really MIGHT be decoding unfamiliar words by age 2 or so.

The rest is, as they say...

[Maquenzie]

I heard it first here.

Or rather, I had heard if "Your Baby Can Read", but thought screen time for the under 2 set was dangerous, so I never considered it.

The first time I began to think of it as a possibility with my family was from this website, and only recently. My 11 month old started talking in complete sentences, with correct pronouns, and up to 8 words. I was looking up information about that, and somehow landed here.

...what made me stay was the somewhat convincing articles. And I drew parallels with early potty learning. We do it in infancy, and opponents have the similar arguments as opponents of early learning...that it can't be done or it's harmful, or the kids will hate it. And that simply hasn't been our experience at all. It's felt natural and .. fun! So, I thought I'd try early reading to see how it felt. So far, we're enjoying it.

To be fair, I had already made the leap to Montessori and Suzuki violin education for my oldest, which are both early learning advocates. Whole word reading was something I was avoiding in favor of a phonics first approach.  So, seeing videos of children here learning phonics after whole word, or in conjunction with helped give me the interest and courage to try.

My brother could read the newspaper at 3, and I think knew all of the US Presidents. My mother says she didn't "teach" those things to him though. I have no idea how he learned so young. I did not read until 5 (I'm the younger sibling). So, I've always known early learning is possible.

[Maquenzie]

I meant to also add that I had been tentative because my brother who taught himself to read at 2, the paper at 3, is dyslexic. (my dad has similar reading issues) And I learned at 5 and don't have dyslexia.

[lzp11]

Wow! A doman-baby! You're probably about to become something of a celebrity on these boards, because a lot of the parents are anxious to hear from someone who's been "through ALL the paces".

Would you mind telling us a bit more about your school days? Do you feel like you benefited from early reading in any special way?
Where you "advanced" or "ahead" in school? What was the transition like for you when you went to school?
Did your mom do other programs with you and if so which ones?
Do you plan to do more with your daughter than your mom did? (ie reading AND math or reading AND EK)

I’m not sure I’m quite so interesting as all that!!    Plus I don’t suppose it’s possible to generalise too much from one child to another.   

My mum did Doman reading in quite a relaxed way with me – it was all about fun and spending time together really.  I don’t remember any sense of ‘learning’.  We didn’t do anything other than the reading and some maths books later (but nothing to do with Doman style teaching).

I think probably the biggest impact was that I was a reading addict for most of my childhood (but I’m sure many children are).   I read very fast (and still do) – I was allowed double the quota of books from our local library because I went so often!  I remember reading quite a range of literature – I remember several times the librarian checked that my mum was happy for me to take out certain books because of my age.   I think this gave me a strong feel for the English language, and I learned a lot through reading fact and fiction books.   I probably had a better vocabulary than a lot of my friends (but I also had two brothers who were a lot older than me and I spent a lot of time talking to them).   I should add that I was not stuck at home all day reading - I still did lots of other activities / sports as well!

In my primary school, the other children took it for granted that I was ahead in reading, but I’m not sure the teachers really noticed!  It didn’t seem to make much difference, or at least I didn’t notice.  I suppose I was in the advanced English group, but it was all very low key. 

I guess I did quite well at school, I became a medical doctor in the end.  But I’m not sure you could give Doman the credit as so did my older brother, who did not do any early reading programme.  It is quite difficult to filter out the impact of having parents who valued education, reading and learning, against that of the reading programme itself.

As an aside, I remember reading in Freakonomics that the children of people who have a lot of books in their home tend to read better and have higher scores, even if you control for socio-economic status, but there was little evidence of benefit of purely reading to a child every day (e.g. at the library).  I thought that was really interesting (although how true it is, I am not certain).  But if so, perhaps it is something to do with the fact that our kids will mimic us and learn from what we do as much as what we say or try to teach them.  So on this basis, I personally try to read as much as I have time for (not so much these days) and talk to my dd about the books that I’m reading, whether it is a medical journal or a fiction book.  My parents both read a lot and had books piled everywhere!

Anyway, as I said, I’m as much motivated by building a bond with my dd through a shared love of reading, and learning, as much as any specific outcomes that may or may not arise for her.  I’m really cautious of not making any assumptions.  Because something worked a certain way for me – that is all very individual and I have no clue if it would be the same for her – she is a new person!  I am interested in reading, also maths, languages and music, which I believe are all so important to stimulate young children.   I’m less excited by EK, as I’m not entirely convinced by the benefits of memorizing information (never really worked for me).

[Frukc]

Douglas Doman was visiting our city and giving a lecture, and it was announced in our local parenting forum. I was very negative about the idea but I went to lecture - to know what I am criticizing.
Here I am

[DadDude]

@lzp11 - thanks very much for your response.  Very interesting; food for thought.

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