Last night I watched the commercial for “Teach Your Baby To Read!”, a product that teaches babies and toddlers to memorize the shapes on flashcards read. The urge I had to smack all those parents upside the head, well, it reminded me of my urges when I watch the kiddie pageant spectacle, Toddlers and Tiaras.

It’s the same damn thing.

Poise, the ability to walk in high heels, reading. . .those are all great skills to have. Reading’s obviously more important, but still. In our looks-obsessed society, the ability to wear lip gloss without it going all over your teeth can’t be denied. But why the rush?

Four year olds don’t need to look polished to do well at preschool.

And babies don’t need to be able to read. And, in fact, they aren’t actually reading. Sure, I saw them say the words on the cards, or gesture to indicate that they knew what the word was. But that’s not actually reading. They didn’t decode (aka “sound out”) the word and they sure as hell didn’t comprehend its meaning from the surrounding text.

I’ve taught lots of kids to read and I guarantee that none of them would have read for real any more quickly had they memorized the words for body parts as babies. If their parents had talked to them more, read them more stories and/or not let them spend all night watching horror movies, that might have helped. But this stupid program? Not so much.

A colleague once referred to me as “The Reading Bitch”, that’s how into teaching reading I was. I might have been a little militant. I might have distributed timelines and scopes and sequences and lesson plans to my elementary school teacher colleagues a little obsessively.

And yet my baby has no idea what letters even are. But I have gotten him to sit still long enough to finish listening to “Touch and Feel Farm”. I’m kinda proud of that. Because it’s age-appropriate.

I suppose in a world where first graders have cell phones and grandmothers attend Botox parties, age-appropriate isn’t a very popular concept. Sure, everyone clucks over the pageant kids, made up and hairsprayed like teenage prom queens, but they still have their own shows. And I’ve yet to hear anyone talk about, much less criticize, “Teach Your Baby To Read”.

The truth is, kids who memorize easily (or very early), often have a hard time reading more difficult text when they hit second or third grade. And forget about developing their thinking skills. Memorization does jack for those. But all those parents can now brag that their one year olds can read, which I guess is more imporant than age-appropriate or thinking.

Score another one for the assholes.