Dr. B Calls Out "Your Baby Can Read" as an Inappropriate Party Trick

Attempting to teach an infant to read prior to being cognitively ready is essentially the same as teaching your child a trick as opposed to a complex skill. That is, you may be able to get your child to say “cat” on command in response to the visual word cat but this would not be considered reading. I believe teaching your baby to read is not only unnecessary but it could potentially have a negative impact on long-term learning and development.

When you spend time training a child in a structured and repetitive way to read words before the process is meaningful to them, you are essentially taking time away from teaching more developmentally appropriate skills necessary for pre-literacy such as language acquisition.

http://www.mommyshorts.com/2010/10/dr-b-calls-out-your-baby-can-read-as-an-inappropriate-party-trick.html#tp