So your kid isn’t an Einstein – what did you expect?
The Walt Disney Company is offering refunds to parents who bought any of the “Baby Einstein” DVDs in the past four years because an advocacy group says that the colorful, musical videos don’t make babies smarter and may be the primary contributor to kids’ waning attention spans when they get to school. Raise your hand if you actually thought that sitting your infant in front of the TV for hours on end was a recipe for brilliance. Yeah, a brilliant marketing scheme!
Taken purely as entertainment, the videos are quite nice. Classical music, pretty colors and silly puppetry are fun but not overly stimulating as they introduce babies to the world around them. I have several DVDs (hand-me-downs from friends with older kids), and my 3-year-old son became fascinated with the planets after watching “Baby Galileo.” Heck, I’ve referenced them while homeschooling my older kids as we’ve learned about the music of Bach, Mozart and Beethoven as well as the art of Van Gogh and Monet coupled with reading about those same artists in library books. But we use the videos as just a tiny part of their studies, not the only thing.
As much as some parents would like to believe, there is no substitute for spending time playing with and reading to your children – from infancy all the way up until they leave the nest. Yes, babies probably could learn their colors or animals from watching the videos over and over, but teaching them yourself – cuddled on your lap, turning pages in a book together, pointing to pictures, saying words over and over – gives them so much more that money can’t buy. Ditto for playing with them – making silly sounds or faces, playing finger games, acting out nursery rhymes or going for a walk outside. Love, affection and attention don’t come prepackaged and can’t be put on “repeat play.” Even older kids want and need their parents’ regular attention – the lack of it is when they start getting into trouble.
Don’t you get frustrated going through an automated phone directory trying to schedule an appointment or inquire about your bank account? “I just want to talk to a human!” The basic need for human interaction never ends. That’s why people have friends and get married. In the age of instant gratification, the TV, DVD player, computer and Internet have changed that. We can go whole days without coming in contact with a real human. Add in Americans’ insatiable desire for more, bigger and better, and you have parents who will buy (and buy into) anything that they think will give their kids a competitive advantage in school and in the real world. Hence the popularity of baby gyms, music classes, swimming lessons and “educational” videos.
There’s a reason why formal schooling takes 13 years and why kids don’t start kindergarten until they’re 5. They aren’t developmentally ready for it. More important than learning their ABCs during their first 5 years is having kids learn how to interact with humans, to love and be loved, to see their parent as an authority figure, to have patience, and to be excited about reading and learning. That takes time, which many parents just don’t seem to have enough of. But plenty of them had $16 a pop to plunk down for a video. Which they can now get refunded.
Are you planning to apply for a refund for the DVDs? Did you ever believe the claims that “Baby Einstein” would make your baby smarter? How much TV do you let your infant or toddler watch?
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Nov 18th, 2009 at 3:26 pm
[...] So your kid isn’t an Einstein – what did you expect? [...]