your baby CAN'T read

This clip from NBC says it all. Why don't people get that?!?!? I recently wrote a parent-response paper for my research & theories course about this program (see below), and now there's an official complaint against it. We were prompted to respond to parental concerns about whether or not their baby would indeed fall behind somehow if they didn't "read" early. I'd love to hear your thoughts.

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Those types of programs claim that they make a baby smarter or help a baby learn to read early. To show an infant a word on what is essentially a flash card and expect them to literally read it would be like skipping over learning that those symbols we call letters that make up words represent something such as the spoken language. They are not developing language or literacy directly related to reading in this instance, but instead they are simply connecting symbols to a particular meaning.

The developmental psychologist and theorist Piaget and many other theorists believe that it is not intelligence that is increased but the ability to gain new knowledge by progressively increasing information based on what was learned at the previous stage of development. So, each new tidbit of information is either incorporated into what is previously known or is changed in order to relate the information to some new meaning. An example would be an infant that is weaning. When the infant knows how to suckle at the breast to receive milk, he uses this previous information to learn how to suck on a bottle. If the infant is then given a sippy cup and tries to suck in the same manner, he will more than likely choke on the excess milk that comes out of the spout. This new information has to be changed in order to relate to the idea of gently sipping instead of the stronger act of sucking.

At 7 months old, infants are still learning how to organize input from their five senses with motor responses. They explore through their senses, such as making sounds to communicate with other people. They are learning how to move their bodies and manipulate objects. Piaget believed that infants gain knowledge through action, and that young infants have no concept of objects existing continually in space unless they are using them somehow. It isn’t until about 8 months of age that infants are capable of representing objects in their minds so that they understand the objects still exist even when they can not be seen. Out of sight literally is out of mind for them. Piaget called this first stage of cognitive development the “sensorimotor” period, which lasts until about 2 years of age. It isn’t until this time that infants can use symbols in their mental representations.