Your baby can read, for three easy payments of $99 (plus S&H)

I saw something yesterday that made me do a double-take. It was a commercial for something called, “Your Baby Can Read.” Apparently it’s a combination of books and recordings and visual software that teaches your infant-to-toddler-age child to read.  Now I’m all for reading to your child and teaching her everything you can. I believe that helps a child appreciate the written word and hunger for learning. But a baby reading? I don’t know.

I have two children. They are 19 and 21 years old, but I still vividly remember what they were like as babies. Like most other kids, I could have easily put them in a bucket and just hosed them off occasionally for the first 12 months of life. They took food in; they gave some back. Yes, they developed skills and awareness and emotional expression during that critical first year, but I can pretty much guarantee you that they were not reading-ready. They are both smart, bright, delightful children, but no way were they going to read to me during that first year of life. As a young mom, I felt lucky not to have done anything that resulted in injury or death to them in that year; I sure wasn’t going to muddy the waters by trying to teach them to read.

As they got a bit older, a day without either of them ingesting discarded cigarette butts or munching on dog food was a good day.

Part of this commercial (an infomercial, really) spotlighted a mother holding her slobbering little prodigy in her lap, regurgitating words that had been hammered into her little head by a robotic male voice. Mom just cooed and giggled in delight as her little “reader” uttered barely understandable words in response to flash cards. What Mom failed to realize is that she could have taught the little girl completely inaccurate words to correspond with each card. “CAT = HULA HOOP” or “TRUCK = SWORD.” A baby has no frame of reference.

True reading requires the ability to both decode a word AND process the meaning simultaneously. Later on, it also requires the ability to comprehend and retain those words, but maybe that’s the next phenomenon to hit the market – “Your Child Can Retain and Comprehend.”

In our society, we are so rushed to push our kids past all the others, to somehow give them an edge over all the other kids with whom they’ll compete throughout their lifetimes. To give the marketing mastermind(s) behind “Your Baby Can Read” credit, they were smart enough to capitalize on this fact. Still, I’m holding out for something really spectacular to come along, like “Your Baby Can Vacuum” or “Your Baby Can Prepare Your Taxes.” When I see either of those, I’m in.

So…the Chinese are smarter than we are. Who’da thunk?

Well, according to the news piece I just watched, they are. In fact, the United States has dropped from the enviable top spot as world's most educated nation to (gulp) 12^th place. Please tell me that this does not come as a surprise, folks. I have always been struck by the discipline and level of expectation Asian parents in general have where their children are concerned.

On the flip side of that, I have always been bothered by the lack of expectation we as Americans have for our offspring. I'm bothered by the over-showering of praise we rain on our children when they do things that we should expect them to do anyway. "Oh look honey, Johnny went poopy in the potty. Let's rent a limo and take him and his entire daycare class to Chuck E. Cheese!" I remember leaving my daughter's 5^th grade graduation, and when we walked outside the building, there was a line of limousines waiting to scoop up the little darlings and spirit them off to God-knows-where. We're talking 5^th grade folks. That's what, 11 years old? What on earth do these parents have planned for the kids' high school graduations? The Concorde to Dubai?

What are these kids supposed to strive for? What, exactly, is within their reach when they're out on their own? I suppose that's an experiment; the results have yet to be revealed. Then again, have you ever watched the TV show "Pimp my Sweet Sixteen" or whatever it's called? It's positively nauseating. That's our future?

Back to education. All this goes hand-in-hand. For once, I'm not really wandering off-topic. I have a friend who, when her son was in 4^th grade, withdrew him from school because (and I quote) "His teacher got onto him for not doing his homework. He's just a little boy!" He never returned to conventional school, by the way. He was "home schooled" for a time, which means he sat on his behind and played video games day in and day out. The saddest thing about his story is that he was a very bright kid. He was also over-indulged and now, at age 20, he struggles with simple life issues, like getting a job and paying bills. Sadly, his is not the only story I'm familiar with.

We graduate kids from high school who can't spell. Many can't perform simple mathematical calculations. Our kids, on average, are in school more than 40 fewer days than kids in China. We push kids out into the world with their grubby little hands held out, expecting the world to accommodate them because they don't really feel like applying themselves. They've never had to. The world is not a nice place. It's not going to baby our babies, folks. Technology morphs by the second. The world is facing challenges that require smart people to solve. The world does not need whiny underachievers whose mommies and daddies swoop in to protect them from the world!

And while we're at it – YOUR is possessive – "Those are your shoes."

YOU'RE is a contraction of the two words YOU and ARE – "You're a poor speller."

THERE – "There are your shoes!"

THEIR – "Their shoes are not yours!"

THEY'RE – Another contraction, this time of THEY and ARE "They're confused about where their shoes are!"

OK now that that's settled…