Re: Teach Your Baby to Read

On Sun, 23 Nov 2003 21:07:53 EST, [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Stan)
wrote:

>Hello all,
>I'm interested in hearing good and bad opinions on the now 40 year old
>"teach your baby to read" book. I've heard a lot of "bad science"
>claims about Doman et al, and if anyone has anything good to say
>long-term about his programs for well children, it certainly doesn't
>appear they do so publicly.  I'm not intersted in sending my 3-week
>old son off to one of their "boot camps" in Philly, but I'm half way
>through the "Teach your baby to read" book and the techniques
>mentioned in the book seem pretty harmless: if they work, great, and
>if not, it isn't as if the 7 minutes a day you spend together with
>flash-cards has a long-term negative impact.  I'm interested in any
>comments either way, but specifically looking for someone who used it
>some time in the past and has some objective long-term opinion of its
>use.

I learned  reading with flashcards from the Doman system some 36 years
ago and what I can say is that I learned to read very early (way
before kindergarten) and have always been a very fast and very fluent
"sight" reader.  Of course I cannot tell you conclusively that this
resulted from the use of the flashcards, but the few minutes a day
spent doing them with me (I think I had only one session a day, not
necessarily the complete Doman regimen of several short sessions)
clearly didn't do any harm.

On the negative side, I have heard lots of negative things about
Doman's patterning system, and specifically the intense courses he
recommends (in his school or even at home if done devotedly enough) so
I'm not inclined to take his methods too seriously, per se. In other
words, I don't think a few minutes of flashcards a day can be harmful,
but believe that the full Doman "system" can be.

--Lisabell