Some boys are just slow, I'm sure my brother would have been diagnosed with a bunch of disorders if he had been born recently.  He did not talk until age 3, but once he started talking became a predominantly verbal person, he is the one who taught me to speed read and he could easily put away 3-4 Hardy Boys in a day, and I wanted to know how and he "taught" me.  He was a gifted student in school, and a perfectly normal "bright" adult.  I just want to point out that it is not always a disorder, at times late talking is a variation of normal so don't panic.  Our boys are developing slowly, we have to give them a chance.

You are doing enough, your baby is doing great.  Just because they don't "perform" the way we want them to when we want them to it does not mean they don't understand, just try to be as giving as possible and please don't judge your daughter's response as she is integrating a lot of skills that you have taught her, plus the ordinary growing up stages.  Good luck, you are a super Mom, and don't doubt that your daughter will be amazing.

I would love to do the research but I'm not really qualified!  The only Ph.D. I know is working in public health for that age group more so than early learning or early education.  Good luck finding some one, this is a very interesting area, but like you said most people you run into are going to have a strong bias against YBCR, as a matter of fact they would probably not be willing to make a positive finding if there was one, "career suicide" if you know what I mean.  Anyways, if you need additional preschools to work with, I know of one that uses the program.

I want to make my baby some flashcards of basic and advanced shapes.  What is the best way to represent a shape?  Should it be the hollow outline, filled in, black or other color?

We never really got into Baby Einstein over here, but most kids were watching Barney, or worse Spongebob, before this series came out.  So I agree that it probably is getting bad press.  I have a few packs of flashcards that are very worthwhile, however the board books aren't as direct about the concepts as others I've found. I would like to see some videos out there that actually show parents how to work with their children, because obviously as a culture we are losing our touch and new parents don't understand about repetition, routine, etc.  I go to people's homes, and they have every Teletubbies, Barney, Blues Clues, and The Wiggles.  Not sure why Baby Einstein offends people so much.

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My boobakins knows his colors! I show him colors (those paint color strips from lowes) and name them, and for the important ones I taped them to a flashcard and wrote the color on the flashcard.  Yesterday, he said they were all "yellow," so I gave up.  Tonight, he picked up one of my husband's CDs, it was bright red, so I asked him what color and he said "red."  I found a few toys around and asked him the colors and he named them as well.  I just wanted to share that, I am so happy he will know his colors before age 2!

It is a conspiracy, but if you've ever observed our society without blinders I think you would quickly come to the conclusion that there must be a conspiracy to keep the bulk of the population sub-literate.  Most people learn to read quickly and efficiently with a personal "tutor"(a parent) but our model for learning to read includes 1) Being read to and nothing more up until age 5 and 2) Going to a school with 15-20 or more other children where one teacher is responsible for working a miracle.  The result is exactly what "they" want it to be.

Trebellina, hands down.

What does he do when he is asked?  Does he look at the card and guess wrong, look away from the card and guess wrong, or just not guess at all.  If he does guess, is he close? If he really could not see well enough before, and parents have been working with him since he was 2, he may have developed emotional issues associated with learning during that time period. 

Ok, I have a 20 month old, one of his favorite toys is his shape sorter.  He can match the blocks with the proper shapes because we practice this pretty often.  However, lately, he really really wants to put, for instance, the round block in the star shaped hole.  He knows it goes in the round one easily, but I think he is thinking "Why am I limited to the round one, why can't it go in other holes too?"  He gets pretty frustrated and starts throwing things.  What would you do, just put the shape sorter away for a while to save stress, or let him keep playing with it until he accepts the fact that there is only one hole for each block?

You have to be very careful with Rx drugs and youngsters.  I agree that you should get a 2nd opinion, especially from some one who has a reputation for be conservative with prescriptions, or takes a natural approach.  Look outside your immediate area because often doctors in the same area have the same medical school and training and similar approaches.  I was reading that ADHD drugs causes children to on average be 5 lbs lighter and 2 inches shorter than their peers if it is used for the long term!  I was like  , there are so many kids that take Ritalin for years!  Sometime managing the symptom is so much better in the long run.  Is there a chance that she might grow out of the seizures?

My belief is that if you are starting at age 4 years or younger with the flash card whole word method, you will not have anything to worry about.  You are giving your child such a jump start that the chances that she will develop any reading problems is practically zero.  I do believe if a child is sent to school at age 5 or 6 with no print awareness whatsoever and very little knowledge of the alphabet, and is made to memorize whole words, and the teacher plays "hide the ball" with phonics, many children never will learn to read, never grasp basic phonics, and won't be able to distinguish words and decode from left to right.  This is for much older children though.  Babies' brains are different and I think you would be hard pressed to find a dyslexic child that was introduced to reading instruction by age 3, even if it was using a method that would not have worked well at a later age

I did not know until he started saying the words.  Testing him did not work out for us, I felt it was just stressful and he wasn't interested.  If you are patient, before you know it he will be showing you that he knows things that you just taught him once or twice, and you will realize if he knows these things he must have absorbed all the other things you've been showing him so far as well.

Well, our local media has just been over the top about their reporting.  Yesterday, on the radio the news caster was saying something like "Please, don't camp outside of the clinics.  There will be enough vaccine for all of the high priority groups."  Camp outside of clinics???  C'mon now, it's like freezing at night, who would even think to do that. I don't like the level of manipulation in the reporting, making people think they should be desperate for the shot and that everyone else is desperate and only the lucky ones that get up early in the morning will get it.  My son doesn't get shots, I used to get them but I don't anymore, my husband doesn't really get sick so he doesn't bother.