Your Baby Can Read "Rant"

When I was pregnant, I saw this infomercial for Your Baby Can Read. Then I surfed the forums to find that people have a love-hate relationship with this product and creator. Some either love it (mostly educators) or hate it with a passion (mostly stay at home moms). I have also talked amongst my friends and they seem to think its just "ok". But I could never figure out why they thought it was just "ok" when they had never purchased the product. The hate forums are mostly saying that the product doesn't work. There are thousands of people stating this (as well as quite a few that say it works great). I laugh because one mother wrote "I showed this to my 2 year old for 2 weeks straight and she didn't even watch it. She was completely disinterested and she showed no interest in reading after watching the videos". Hmmm. Another participant complained that the only way for this program to work is if she sits down her her little one and reads all the books and does all the flash cards on a regular basis with her as well as watching the videos. She wanted her money back. What is wrong with my generation? Of course you have to do it ALL on a regular basis. Another forum writer wrote about how the program is nothing more than simple word recognition and that she too tried to return it. Duh. I had not idea that it was such a controversy to teach our kids how to read. I thought word recognition and repetition IS how we learn to read. Sometimes I feel like people just want the easiest route for parenting. I am not a huge fan of Dr. Laura but I would have to agree with her when she says "If you can't raise them, then don't have them". I understand that peoples lives get busy and difficult, especially with kids. But I am hard pressed to believe that you don't have time to teach your child how to read but you do have time to go on the internet and find a site to complain about having to do it.

Back to Your Baby Can Read. I love it so far. I actually only have to videos at the present time and I am in the market for the rest of the program. The videos are the same thing over and over. Songs, words games, words and actions, etc. It is not a miracle product by any means. Its actually an ingenious program of dvds, books, and flash cards. Very simple, clean, and easy to do. Words then actions and a little bit of music. What's not to like.

Undergrad?

What is an undergrad anyway? It takes a lot longer to get an undergraduate degree than it does to get a graduate degree. They should call the Masters "Post Graduate" and the Bachelors "Graduate" or "Master of the Universe" because I have never spent so much of my time and money on one thing in my life. Granted I put school off to climb the never-ending corporate latter for a company I eventually resented for seeing me as such a young, charismatic asset that they were willing to promise me the world for my first born. Of course I was unwilling to hand "it" over and ended up walking out of every restaurateurs’ dream of managing a celebrity showcase restaurant set in the heart of America’s playground. Ok, so it wasn’t in the heart but more towards the throat where it can get lodged and choke the life right out of any ambitious, vulnerable culinary graduate. After this experience, I decided that I needed to change gears and maybe choose a path that would help or educate others instead of taking their money so “The Brothers” can buy another yacht and move onto the next cash cow. So here I am, 9 years after graduating high school still two years from my “Use only to conquer the World” long coveted Bachelor. The difficult part: being a full time student during a recession is like having an extremely wrinkly dollar bill that just won’t go into the machine but you keep trying hoping that it will eventually produce the lovely granola bar, but you just end up wasting your time and now you are late to class…and still hungry. In other words, you are completely useless. Any part time job better pay $100 an hour because you are only able to work something like two or three hours a week. Plus, it better be on call, and when I say “on-call” I mean, “I will call you when I can work because it’s going to be different each day and week.” Don’t get me wrong, I know eventually this inferno they call college will pay off. But in the mean time, the amazing United States, with its bottomless pit of loans, credit, and bad mortgages has opted out of helping with such small insignificant dilemmas. So the quest for the undergrad right now actually looks like the door at the end of the hallway on the Poltergeist that stays the same distance away from you no matter how fast you run towards it. Other than all that, life is always good!! :)