Relatively speaking, Baby Einstein DVD's are full of dull FAIL

Forgive me, but it's hard for me to understand these parents who apparently believed a DVD could make their babies smarter and now want refunds from Disney (and are getting them) because, lo and behold, their babies didn't turn out to be Einsteins after all. Good grief.

Do I think all teevee is always bad, all the time? Of course not. I'm a committed Mad Men and Dexter fangirl; as such, on Sunday nights, you can have my cable remote when you can pry it from my cold, dead...well, you know. And as for children's video, if it weren't for the Sesame Street tapes we had piled high in the playroom ca. early-1990's, I'd never have been able to take a shower or get ready to go out. Indeed, brightly-hued bits of programming like Elmo's ABC's would entertain Son One, in particular, for about 20 minutes--tops--as he bounced around in his playpen. And that gave me just enough time to wash my hair and race back out before he started smashing things and hurling his Junior Legos across the room and beaning the cat. Now, this boy was able to recite the alphabet at 18 months (his favorite letter, God help me, was "da-do-ooo": W). He knew several words in Spanish, too.

Years later, when Son Three was born, someone gave me a Baby Einstein video. He pretty much ignored it then; in fact, none of the boys liked it and it sat on the shelf unwatched, but we did wind up using it when Son Three was four, as an adjunct to his thrice-weekly speech therapy (my youngest son didn't begin to speak until he was five; now, at age 10, he gets straight-A's and has a flawless 100% average in spelling, of all things.)

I guess what I'm getting at is this: Every child is different; there are different "brands" of intelligence; and every child develops at a unique pace. And most importantly, none of these different kinds of intelligence can reasonably be expected to benefit in any meaningful and measurable way from something as easily-packaged and mass-marketed as a series of dull, condescendingly simplistic videos, which, after all, are just slide-show-style image displays of familiar objects accompanied by single-word statements set to various commercially-accepted and (considerably) less-challenging classical pieces.

Hey, here's a bold idea: Why not just play the damned Mozart in the car? That way, you'll be pleasantly surprised when your four-year-old hums things like Eine Kleine Nachtmusik in the checkout line and can tell people exactly what it is he's singing (okay, so they didn't always get the Köchel numbers right, but still). Who knows--you might then find yourself and your progeny moving on to Schubert, Shostakovitch, Glass, and Zappa. (Be still, my beating heart.)

But back to these videos. For the most part, I think the vast majority of child-friendly teevee is dead boring and might even be a depressing experience for bright, creative babies (grownups, too); moreover, plunking children in front of the tube every day for extended periods of time seems counterintuitive, if not lazy. Instead, why not just read little books to your babies? Dance with the wee buggers and speak to them in different languages! Buy some old-fashioned globes for your house--yeah, I know, The World is Yours, Tony Montana, but they do look cool--and show them where they are, relative to everyone else on this Big Blue Marble (ahem). Cook with them and measure stuff out--one, two, three..okay, stop! Let them build towers out of your Tupperware (trust me, by five or six months, they'll have figured out how to pick the baby locks on your cabinets anyway). Get a telescope and look at the stars together.

Hell's bells, none of this is rocket science, so to speak.

Comments

[gelfling545]

A local professor of education said in a lecture some years ago that if we told parents that they could help their children do better in school by walking across Lake Erie (we're in western NY), there would be daily drownings; but that when we tell them that they can help best by reading to, and later with, them it seems to be ignored. Nothing you can buy for a child will aid his intellectual development as much a book that you read together.

[Lisa Simeone]

Good grief, indeed.

[Eric Wilde]

Yep. I agree 100%.

We received the Baby Einstein library from a mother whose children had outgrown them. Baby Mozart received some play when the girls were < 10 months old in order for us to do things like eat, relieve the bladder or change clothes. With twins, even a TV didn't give us the chance to shower. By the time they were 10 months old Baby Einstein, even the DVDs supposedly designed for older children, were just ignored.

Having no family nearby and two toddlers to chase, we still use the TV during those times when its needed (such as getting ready for work in the morning.) We've instigated the rule that they can only watch TV in Japanese, still giving us plenty of fun shows for the girls that are on par with Sesame Street with respect to content. They now understand Japanese about as well as English, though their English vocabulary is larger than their Japanese vocabulary.

My wife and I are occasionally at odds because I'm the stricter one when it comes to educational activities. I'll always turn the TV off immediately after finishing whatever chore needed attending (well, fairly immediate. If its a good skit or scene in a longer movie I'll wait until that skit/scene is complete.) She's content to keep it going for a good 15 minutes longer in order to get a little respite to her day. Books or puzzles or crayons or etch-a-sketch or musical instruments or cooking pans or stuffed animals or whatever takes energy from their little noggins is always preferable.

[Stephen]

I let my kids watch too much TV, I'm sure, but my daughter is always in the advanced group in her class for each subject, and my son has hit all the developmental milestones at the right time if not a bit early, so I'm content.

Baby Einstein videos are nice if your kid is into them, because the music is soothing. So if you need to give them some tube time, it's less grating than a lot of stuff on the TV.

Have any of you caught Yo Gabba Gabba yet? I hated it at first, but it's really grown on me. My son loves it; he's incapable of passively watching it. My favorite bit is how many famous singers and groups have been on it - I really liked the song The Roots did.

[yoyo]

Although if your kid starts watching/reading scifi then they might actually pick up some rocket science.