K.C.
My hasband and I looked into it and we are now strongly convinced it is a pretty awful program. You can google "my baby can read scam" and see for yourself the amount of scam reports that it has received. However you know the saying "if you like a product/service you will tell one person if you hate it you will tell a million" but that's just on the company itself not the program.
My husband and I are both elementary school teachers which is what first attracted us to find out more about this program. We really wanted to learn more about it. What the program is is videos that flash words and pictures on the screen followed by a picture of that thing and the whole idea is your child will memorize the words and eventually be able to figure out what sounds the letters make in other words. This technique is called the "whole-word" approach to reading. It was taken out of schools in I think the early 80's never to be seen again because of how difficult it actually made reading for children. With the Whole word approach children learn to read much more quickly but do not learn to spell which can hinder writing (not to mention confidence), and they also do not learn all the sounds that letters can make. A phonetic approach is much more widely accepted, and although it takes much longer for a child to learn they are actually proven to be better readers/writers overall from children that learn to read using the whole word approach. Just think about how many sounds the vowels alone can make for the sound "i" aside from short and long sounds there is i_e, igh, y. There is the sound "ow" as in snow and "ow" as in cow. And a million other confusing sounds that need to be taught.
Of course make your own decision. The whole premise behind YBCR is that they will be able to read sooner so read more and learn more. So when other kids are learning to read they can spend that time filling in the gaps in their own education. There is no program that can ever make your child more intelligent, but the earlier you expose them to things the more they can learn.
I hope this helped a little and wasn't just a confusing mess. In my opinion is is not worth the $200. You can make your own flashcards and pictures if that is how you would like your child to learn to read. Because your daughter is almost two I would start working on phonics with her instead. I know a cute little alphabet song that has a word and hand motion to each letter. Let me know if you would like the words and hand motions. My first graders love it and I'm sure a 2 year old would as well. You can get little phonics workbooks at Barnes and Noble or any other bookstore (or even Sams Club, target, or walmart) and work on those with your daughter if you would like to be pointing her in the right directions towards reading. Make sure you are working together and not just sitting her down with worksheets. You can also print out free ones online. As you work on a sound you can do a hunt around the house to find objects that start with that letter. Start with the first letter of her name or just a letter that doesn't have more than one sound like the letter M.
Remember the best thing you can do for your children to get them interested in reading is read to them, talk to them, have vocabulary building conversations, and let them see how much you enjoy reading.
Sorry so long, I just feel really strongly about this topic! :)
