It is important that parents follow the attention of baby rather than control or set the agenda.” not only has not been proven, it is at odds with what we know best about how a baby learns. Flash cards and computer programs are questionable as learning tools at a young age. “Sometimes that can be a simple game no fancier than peekaboo. “It is important that stimulation is in the framework of relationships,” she says. She says objects that children can touch and move provide a learning experience, as do adults talking and singing. If it takes him into a more isolated way of learning or memory rote, then it is an undermining toy.” Carol Coppole, an early childhood education specialist with the National Association for the Education of Young Children, agrees with Dr.

If a toy helps a child interact, then it is a good toy. If you get distracted by gadgets, you might get away from the fundamentals, and then a child may not do so well. “You don’t need any special gadgets or toys. “Playing simple back-and-forth games and looking for toys and playing ‘let’s pretend’ games, these are the kinds of emotional interactions that foster intellectual and emotional growth,” Dr. Stanley Greenspan, clinical professor of psychiatry and pediatrics at George Washington University and the author of several books on child development. While a baby’s first three years are a time for rapid growth and brain development, a parent who is attentive and interactive with a child is doing fine, says Dr. It’s also enough to fuel a debate among politicians, educators and child care advocates, each of whom has definite ideas about the best way to rear children. It’s enough to give a new parent a headache, not to mention make parents feel guilty if they choose to string up a pastel mobile and turn on the Rolling Stones. Provide enough stimulation of the senses with developmental rattles and a “Nutcracker Suite” recording, and you begin to raise baby’s IQ by as much as 15 points, author Susan Ludington-Hoe says in her book “How to Have a Smarter Baby: The Infant Stimulation Program for Enhancing Your Baby’s Natural Development.” Show your infant pictures of faces drawn in black and white to stimulate baby’s brain, say the manufacturers of the Lamaze line of toys. Play Mozart, and a child’s IQ score can be boosted, some researchers have said. It is not hard to track the dizzying array of information aimed at parents, however. However, it is hard to track its economic growth because there is a fine line between what is a toy and what is an educational tool. Clearly, there is a booming industry, filled with with Web sites, stores and catalogs devoted to educational toys and supplies for children. However, in the past two decades as society has become more technologically advanced and education has become more competitive many other programs, books, tapes and even toys have produced similar claims. It has been around since the early 1960s. Doman’s method is available from books such as his “How to Teach Your Baby to Read” and through courses at his training center, the Institute for the Achievement of Human Potential in Philadelphia. “When I see her look at the cards and solve the equations, she is so excited,” Mrs. She is always prepared to answer skeptics. We have done the math program, and she can do complex math problems and point to a card with the right number of dots 90 percent of the time.” Is Lauren Vanderhoef, the daughter of two parents with master’s degrees, naturally bright? Or have the flash-card sessions paid off? A little of both, Mrs.

She can identify the word “owl” with no picture.

“We go through books, and she picks out pictures and names them. Vanderhoef, a 35-year-old systems consultant from Dunn Loring. “I can tell this has made a difference,” says Mrs. Doman’s method costs the Vanderhoefs little because they made most of their own cards by pasting cutout images on cardboard and writing the words in magic marker. She began the sessions when Lauren, now 22 months, was 8 weeks old, holding her child’s attention for 30 seconds with big pictures of leaves, flowers, insects and colors. Introducing baby to words and pictures on rapidly changing flash cards several times a day made sense, Mrs. Shawn Vanderhoef was newly pregnant with her daughter, Lauren, when she heard about Glenn Doman’s methods to multiply a baby’s intelligence.

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