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Limit exposure to ‘Baby Einstein’ and ‘Brainy Baby'

Posted by tom | Aug 16, 2007

Due to her developmental delays, Eden watched almost no baby DVD's and videos.  Instead she has burst onto the scene with kids materials alongside Ellen and Hayley.  What is the truth and what is marketing?  Are we in a scenerio similar to bottled water? Disney claims the University of Washington report to be just plain wrong in its assertion that infants who watched DVD’s and videos designed for babies understood fewer words than did infants who didn’t watch the recorded programs.

PS.  The Genius of ‘Baby Einstein’ takes the conversation in a helpful direction.

Update: 4:01pm  Now the furor has moved to the credibility of research, see UW President rejects Disney complaints, referenced by Chronicle of Higher Ed piece and I'm sure the Chronicle has just opened a can of worms regarding higher education vs. media/business.  Check out the post/link given below for some helpful thoughts.

Eden Update | Comments (4) | Trackbacks (0)

4 Comments & 0 Trackbacks of "Limit exposure to ‘Baby Einstein’ and ‘Brainy Baby'"

    I've noticed Noah doing more "older" things with Jonathan than Jonathan did at "that age." Ex, we had only board books before Jonathan was interested in longer stories, but now we hardly ever read board books. I appreciated the "p.s." article. By the way, the only Baby Einstein video we ever owned was inane and not what I would want anyone of any age to watch.

    Posted by joyful, Aug 16 2007, 10:01

    Thanks for prodding me to make my own post on the subject. I ignored it for a while but finally got frustrated by the furor. In addition to putting 'way too much emphasis on one study (and a telephone survey at that), we're not dealing with the most important issues.

    Posted by sursumcorda, Aug 16 2007, 12:17

    Our son Michael has had some significant delays and challenges. However, we have used a few baby videos that have helped his vocabulary increase significantly. One of them is a Baby Einstein video called "Baby Wordsworth." The videos we have used all teach sign language. Michael is now two years old and knows about 35 different words in sign language. We feel it has really helped prevent what many experience as the "terrible twos" since he can communicate his wants and needs. Our next child will be learning sign language, for sure!

    Posted by Frank Chiappeirno, Aug 22 2007, 23:37

    I am definitely in favor of sign language, though Noah (our youngest) has not liked to use sign language as much as Jonathan, though he definitely knows that he can use them if he wanted to.

    Posted by Jon Daley, Sep 11 2007, 12:55
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