We’ve all seen the commercials with the babies reading before they can even talk and kids reading as young as 2. Yes, I was skeptical but impressed at the same time. So why did I jump on the Your Baby Can Read band wagon? Well, it’s mostly because of Gio.

His lack of preschool experience did put him a little behind his class when he started but Gio is a quick learner. With a little help from Mom at home, he was caught up in no time and he continued to improve greatly in all subjects…. except for one: Reading. I really didn’t know what they expected from him and what more I could do.  I read to him every night and he was starting to read small books to me.  I thought he was doing well.  Granted, his school has really high standards and his class has a lot of super smart kids.

So what do I do? Pile on more books for him to read? He just kept getting tired and frustrated. Plus I am not the best teacher for Gio. We have different ways of learning and it’s a struggle to get homework done with him.

Now there’s also Seppe… he’s so much further behind than most kids his age. We know that he will need all the extra help he can get. One day, I saw that commercial and decided – why not? It’s $14.99 for 30 days and we can give it all back if we don’t like it and get our money back. We figured it wouldn’t hurt to try it out.

We’ve been doing it for a week now. Gio is on the Your Child Can Read series and Seppe is on the Your Baby Can Read series. I had them both on the baby one at first, but it was obvious that Gio was past that. Plus he wasn’t helping by answering all the questions without giving Seppe a chance. The older series definitely suits Gio best. It’s longer and has more words for him to learn, plus it teaches phonics. I honestly believe that it has helped him a lot. He has gotten better at reading words and at writing sentences. He is at the very end of the age group of when this program will work best, but like I said before, Gio is a fast learner.  I will be moving him on to the second part faster than scheduled.

Seppe… well let’s just say it’s as if he’s a baby.  He takes a lot more work. I have to sit with him every time he watches his dvd. Partly to make sure he watches it, and partly because he needs that extra support. It’s not that he doesn’t like it. He just can’t sit still and focus. He is getting there though, very slowly. He can recognize a couple of words. It has helped him learn his colors though. He no longer calls black  and brown “dark.” It is definitely adding to his vocabulary and also helping with his talking. He is also more curious about any words he sees and constantly asks me to read to him.

Obviously, Seppe will not be reading in a months time, but I am hoping that there is some improvement. So far, I am happy with it. For me, it’s challenging because I have two kids at different levels that I have balance my time with. Reading is very important to me so I am not just putting the dvd on and walking away. I am very involved with this program. Besides the dvd, there are books and flash cards. We spend a lot of our day doing reading games. It’s hard work but my boys are worth it. I’ll have another update after week 2.