So, I said I wouldn’t talk much about the Baby Einstein thing, but this article brings up a much more disturbing comment:

…when you’re alone with your baby for hours on end, and especially when you haven’t been able to sleep more than three hours withing being woken up in months, sometimes you want to eat a meal or read the newspaper. You need something to occupy the baby, and a Baby Einstein video — which tends to make the babies smile and coo — is better than making them stare at the ceiling for twenty minutes.

I’ve read this sentiment before. First off let me say if you have a baby who is screaming for 2 hours and you’ve had no sleep and you put them in front of a Baby Einstein video - that I can understand. But, babies do not need to watch a Baby Einstein video rather than the ceiling. This is a disturbing trend I see mentioned more and more. The point of this study is that developmentally it is worse to put a kid in front of a Baby Einstein video than having them watch the ceilings. I don’t know what’s on the ceiling, but it fascinates them. Apparently babies learn a lot by doing what we would call “nothing”. I read an article in which a father basically created a TV schedule for his daughter, always turning on the TV for her at all meals. His reasoning was that he didn’t want her to be bored. Which is so frightening, because if there is anything a kid younger than 3 is never, it is bored. I mean, I’ve never tested this, but I have a feeling that Stella would play peek-a-boo with me for 7 or 8 hours straight. I’m the one who gets bored. She’ll keep exercising those brain cells forever. So let the kid stare at the ceiling. It’s good for ‘em.

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Comments

Ashley

2007-08-10T03:11:53.000Z

Dude, you gotta watch the Baby Einstein video that someone gave us. It is down right creepy and weird. I guess it’s the equivalent of watching a fish tank and then a different fish tank then some hand puppets. There is a segment where it just shows those magnetic balls bouncing off of each other; you know the kind you find on an executive’s desk.

Tim (http://www.loadedguntheory.com/blog/director/listblog/tim.html)

2007-08-10T15:27:31.000Z

Yeah, that’s what truly blows my mind. Someone took a bunch of free or low cost video clips, cobbled them together, and insinuated that it could make your kid smarter. It’s one of the most amazing snake oil swindles of all time.

jooley ann (www.julieholden.com)

2007-08-12T21:31:19.000Z

Well, the guy’s an idiot. He says, “…as far as I can tell, none of these studies show that the videos are bad for kids,” and yet he links directly to an article that is TITLED, “‘Baby Einstein’ stunts vocabulary, study says.” Um. Wouldn’t stunting your baby’s vocabulary be considered harmful…? Also, the scary thing about his comment is that he’s bitching about not getting more than three hours of sleep at a time, which makes me conclude he must be talking about his experience when parenting an *infant*. Most babies get pretty good at sleeping by 4-6 months. Not all of them, I know, but the “every three hours” thing does tend to die down in most babies after the “fourth trimester” when their brains get a little more organized. So…he’s talking about putting, like, a 3-month-old in front of the TV? Good Lord. We plan to keep Johanna away from the TV ‘til she’s three. Longer, of course, if she shows no interest. That’s what’s recommended as ideal, so we’re going with it. That means zero TV time for the next 2 years, 4 months. Honestly, that doesn’t seem at all hard to me. *At all*. And trust me, I am *no* supermom. Sorry to rant. I’m very anti-TV. We only watch after Johanna goes to bed, and then it’s just an hour of something we’ve Tivo’d. The rest of the time, our TV stays off. We’re freaks that way. :)