Hi Everyone,
Does anyone know of any actual scientific studies that will help convince her?
I love my wife. She is a wonderful, loving mother who really does a great job thinking about and researching what is good for the health and growth of our son. She is definitely in the " overprotective " category and if that’s her only fault as a mother, Wyatt and i are very, very lucky.
Unfortunately, sometimes her fears & worries go to far and cause real friction between us. Using learning DVDs and computer learning programs have become a real problem for us with me on one side and her and her family on the other.
Reading has been a big part of my life from an early age and a big reason that i’ve been successful so i’ve always wanted to help my kids develop the same love of reading. Wyatt & I started with Your baby can read dvd’s and books at 2 1/2 months old and he loved it right from the start. Good cuddle time with daddy and he almost always was totally interested for the full 20 min.
I found Brillkids and was really excited because it seemed to be very efficient and smart. Very much like the Rosetta Stone language software i’ve been told and that’s a very successful way of teaching. I bought the full package w/ reading and math and we started about 10 days ago.
Wyatt’s 10 months now and he loves Brillkids too. any learning is fun and we do 10-15 min twice a day and maybe 20 min of a ybcr dvd.
He walks around if he wants while we watch or he’ll play with a ball while he’s standing and watching. Sometimes we just cuddle but we mix up whatever we’re doing so it’s never too long for him to get bored or pressured. If he’s more interested in playing with his truck, we play with his truck for awhile and come back later.
The flash card flip charts are really helpful too. I want to buy more actually. I look forward to meeting with other parents & kids with the same belief that any learning is good learning when it’s fun and all learning is fun for them. Certainly true for Wyatt.
My wife isn’t so convinced. She’s been very skeptical of anyone, any expert, that has a product to sell.
she feels a lot of anxiety about it because i am so in favor of using new teaching tools like these programs and we end up having arguments. We have different ways of teaching him language. She is his primary caregiver right now and she constantly talks or sings with him.
I’m recovering from a car accident so my energy and what i can do with him is limited and that’s part of the reason i love these programs so much. I can get a lot out of a short amount of time. We both love it and being together. Just like we love playing pass with his ball or any of his toys.
Wife’s Concerns/Fears
She thinks using the medium of TV or a computer screen can…
- cause ADD and/or ADHD
- create sleep problems because it stimulates his brain too much.
- Create some sort of bad neuron or synapse connections
It’s the " flashing" that concerns her, not the content.
I don’t think any of this is remotely true. If i didn’t totally believe what we’re doing is not harmful, of course i’d stop. But, Everything that i’ve read and my insticts tell me that as long as we use many ways of teaching him and we do it with love and fun and mix things up… how can any of this be bad?
The idea of stimulating his brain in many different ways and from a very early age just makes total sense to me. It sure seems to be helping Wyatt. He’s understanding lot’s of words verbally. Not really sure about the written words because we don’t test him. I must say that many people, nurses & doctors included, have said what an attentive & smart looking/acting little guy.
By the way, we asked my surgeon, head of neurosurgery in 2 hospitals, he says no to # 1 and for # 2 he says he’s not a “child” neuro doctor.
Then he started to try to get out of our family argument by being switzerland, " you 2 will have to work it out as a family" and then gave only personal feelings about whether it was " needed" or not to use these tools.
If it isn’t harmful…then why wouldn’t we use any and every tool we can get to help our child learn about the world?
That argument has really bugged me actually. WHy wouldn’t we start teaching about language as soon as possible? And teaching the written word at the same time as the verbal word makes perfect sense.
Ok, Can anyone point me to any actual specific research that has studied any of these programs? like i said, my wife is super skeptical and doesn’t trust testimonials much. I wonder if anything will ever convince her. We’re at the point where i finally had to say back off. She does like the Brillkids programs because she says it’s less " flashing " than the YBCR DVDs.
Wyatt is going to have his daddy time and some of it is going to be playing the learning game. That’s what i call it.
I want to read any info about anything that may be harmful to our son, but until she can find something that proves it’s harmful.
Hey Wyatt, want to play the learning game? Or hey Wyatt, it’s learning time. I have my laptop set up on the couch, with a cushion taken out to lower his new baby sized table, and he see’s the purple or red screen of the reading or math and he smiles and comes right over. He stands and moves around, sits or climbs on my lap or plays with a ball or cuddles. He really likes it, especially the sounds of the animals and the video of the laughing baby I’m just learning how to add our own pictures etc.
Anyway, thanks for reading this big letter and for any thoughts or info you may offer