If your child seems to be having trouble with phonemic awareness, watch for other signs of reading trouble when they begin school. If they seem to be doing more poorly than classmates, have them tested for dyslexia. Be aware that school districts will be wary of providing tests for learning disabilities and that they will often perform a test which is designed only to assess if the disability is severe enough to warrant treatment, and frequently, the cut off is designed to minimize costs to the schools. These tests may indicate that your child is dyslexic (a fact that will often go unmentioned by the school), but that the school is not obligated to provide service. Dyslexics make up around 20% of Americans, that majority undiagnosed. A child is at risk if they have a poor home language environment, or have a genetic predisposition. (Basically, if a family regularly uses poor grammar and pronunciation, it can lead to a higher risk of dyslexia aside from traditional inheritance from a dyslexic parent. If a dyslexic child can begin remediation before 8 years old, brain scans indicate that brain activity when comparing re-mediated dyslexics and non-dyslexics is indistinguishable.

My Baby Can Read is little more than a parlor trick- the child is unlikely to benefit from being able to ‘read’ earlier, and if they hope to succeed, they will have to unlearn the lessons the program teaches them .