The great thing is that the big bad government isn’t FORCING you to sit and meet with a PAT educator. It’s OPTIONAL. Why can’t people fathom that what they might not need may be essential for someone else?!?!? It’s twisted thinking that says, “I won’t pay for anything that doesn’t serve me.” The same people think that their elected representative was elected to serve ONLY them. It’s a difficult logic to respect.

The referenced blogger was unable to sleep and overwhelmed by the amount of information given in the two hour class, not specifically on the tidbit on repetition. Then at the end of the post she admits:

“And all of that was in 2 hours. Maybe that’s why I can’t sleep…maybe my brain is still overloaded. Nope, I think it’s because I’m so uncomfortable and the little man apparently can’t figure out a comfy position ’cause he’s all over the place and HURTING my right ribs in the process!”

I can understand why people complain about the press taking their quotes out of context…

I also answered your argument earlier which I don’t think you read, so I’ll copy and paste just so it’s obvious:
The third problem is that you’re ascribing an entire position to this educator on the basis of an non-comprehensive blog post. While it appears to be the case that this educator probably says “read the same book as often as possible to your child” it’s not fair to conclude that the educator doesn’t endorse “sing the same song to your child every day, or talk to him/her frequently, and yes these are acceptable substitutes for reading a book”.

You also don’t grasp the logical gains to scale from repetition itself, so I could probably defend that the science implies that the reading the same book strategy is probably part of an optimal strategy for cognitive development.

During the pre-birth classes I attended (which were subsidized by someone as they were free), there was a video showing the terrible effects of ’shaken baby syndrome’. I didn’t think to say ‘hey, this is only a theory. How about showing babies who were shaken and everything turned out ok?’ The presenters of the class had a bias against shaking a child, and I am totally ok with that, regardless of whether the program was subsidized by the gov.

The government subsidizes/teaches lifestyles/philosophies all the time, from vaccinations, one woman-one man marriage (certainly not polygamous marriage anywhere), racial equality (I also wait for the day when people advocate to ‘teach the controversy’ in both evolution and race-based slavery, not), home ownership and even condoms, and their non-pregnancy/non-std uses, in some places.

Maybe Parents as Teachers is low hanging fruit, but I just don’t see a significant, if any, injustice to the parents or the children. There may not be enough upside to justify the cost to the taxpayer, I don’t know. That seems to be part of what you are saying, and I may agree, but I don’t agree with, ‘Parents as Teachers is teaching biases/opinions/theories, and those things have no place being funded by the gov.’ I am on a different side of that.

And all this without a PAT person telling us or “encouraging” us.

And to Kevin: Sarah is not betraying ignorance; she is responding to what a PAT participant wrote on her blog. Maybe that PAT parent is ignorant.

One of Sarah’s previous posts addressed a mom who was obviously doing PAT for a third child. Again, I can’t understand why the lessons with the first child don’t carry over to a third. Which makes me think there’s some other reason that people do PAT – it’s not for “education.”

You once again betray your ignorance. Parents as Teachers educators DO NOT tell anyone that reading the same book every night to their fetus is required, or the only way to bond with your child. You are employing a straw-man argument to vilify a worthwhile program.

Eapen, given that Parents as Teachers educators are not required to hold degrees in child development or medicine–and that they are trained through very short seminars–I don’t think we need to assume they are experts in those fields.

You’re right that there is a consensus that it’s beneficial to interact with fetuses. However, there is no consensus that the interaction has to consist of reading the same book every day. The study you link to addresses many different sounds, including music. This supports my point that there are multiple beneficial ways to interact with fetuses–such as talking or singing a song. I have not seen any study that finds reading one book to be the best way, and I would encourage you to link to that study if it exists.

Yawn! Do you really find it problematic “any time the government endorses particular philosophies or lifestyles”? The government does this everyday to own benefit (queue the list of things you think they don’t do well) when they require a driver’s license to operate a motor vehicle, when they require drinking water be clean and on and on and on and on. The opposite believe who say that government should set no standards and expound no expectations. Blah. Parents as Teachers is not some unbending “you MUST raise your child THIS way” group. Have you had a meeting with PaT? I have. My wife and I talked about our baby, what we thought was challenging, our expectations, etc. and the PaT rep offered options, things we hadn’t thought of, things to try. While some ideologues are just SURE that everyone else is an ideologue (just on the other side), PaT is nothing like that. What’s “problematic” to you is a lifesaver for my family.

Any time the government endorses particular philosophies or lifestyles, I find that to be problematic–even if, as you say, most people will take it with a grain of salt.

If many people are able to ‘cafeteria’ their sacred texts, I believe that they can pick and choose from what ‘official, state sponsored’ people tell them.

It can be argued that Parents as Teachers is a waste of money (I never quite got around to participating) for a bunch of reasons, but I don’t think that parents are unable to discern ‘absolute musts’ from ‘ideas worth trying’ is one of them.

As an aside, today it is virtually impossible to run tests on children these days due to informed consent requirements and such so proving, or disproving, anything about treatments/care given to them is really not feasible.

The second problem here is that you unfairly compare what is probably considered a parenting “best practice” (pre-natal reading with repetition) with what are probably parenting “second best” practices (reading, singing, conversing without repetition in a post-natal stage). We can think of parenting best practices in linear terms; best practices means things like pre-natal reading with repetition and second-best practices involve less focus. So yes, you’re right. The bar for what is sufficient to ensure a functional child is probably not that high in terms of what the Parents as Teachers educator advocates. But the Parents as Teacher educator is not advocating simply what is sufficient and rather what is best.

The third problem is that you’re ascribing an entire position to this educator on the basis of an non-comprehensive blog post. While it appears to be the case that this educator probably says “read the same book as often as possible to your child” it’s not fair to conclude that the educator doesn’t endorse “sing the same song to your child every day, or talk to him/her frequently, and yes these are acceptable substitutes for reading a book”.

The fourth problem is probably the worst. It’s that you’re flat out wrong about the state of medical knowledge. There is a consensus and plenty of research out there that establishes the specific value of repetitive linguistic interaction with fetuses. This article is a good survey of the literature; though specific to prenatal music stimulation contains evidence that this is a field with much research: http://www.birthpsychology.com/lifebefore/sound1.html

There is of course some debate over specifics. But by and large your claims that these ideas have no scientific or research backing are spurious and might have been corrected with a quick google search.