A friend recently told me that "Baby Einstein" is good for babies and makes them smarter. This is false. TV is really not good for children under age 3 (however, studies have shown that children over 3 can actually learn something from educational programs).
The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends against television watching by children under 24 months. We never have the TV on when Henry is awake.
A new study showed that for every hour per day spent watching educational DVDs like Baby Einstein, infants understood 6-8 fewer words than those who did not watch them (this is huge for a baby!). Children with larger vocabularies had parents who read to them or told them stories. In fact, Disney has actually decided to offer a refund to parents who have purchased Baby Einstein DVDs (“No Einstein in your Crib? Get a Refund").
If your goal is to make your child a genius, clever little DVDs are not the way to do it. Actually reading to and talking to your child is the only proven way to guarantee they will have a strong vocabulary and visual skills as they grow into a child.
articles of interest:
DVDs Don't Produce Brainy Babies. U.S. News & World Report.
Baby Einsteins: Not So Smart After All. Time.
'Baby Einstein' Videos Ineffective, Study Finds. NPR (audio).
Study: Babies Raised By Videos Approximately As Dumb As Expected. Gawker.com.
5 comments:
In my experience, Baby Einstein IS effective if done right.
If you throw your child in front of the tv, pop the DVD in and walk away, of course it will be ineffective.
But if the parents watch it with the child and talk about what is being seen and why, the child WILL learn.
My 3 year old nephew LOVES the Baby Einstein DVDs and always has. Due to them, he knows about the planets, animals, seasons, numbers, etc.
He's also reading and telling time. He loves classical music, The Beatles, learning the names of the composers and pieces of the music featured in BE as well as Little Einsteins.
I'm sure you're skeptical of this, but it's true.
Of course we've continued to teach him beyond what BE teaches on DVD, but I disagree that they are THE OPPOSITE of 'Einstein.'
I agree with you and the studies agree with you! For children 3 and older, DVDs like Baby Einstein can be educational! I'm talking about putting a baby in front of the tv. I don't think my 4 month old can learn anything from Baby Einstein.
Most of them are marked 6-9months and up.
He's been watching Baby Galileo since...oh, probably 5 months or so. He responded well to the music and he's been watching it ever since.
But I do agree 100% that the DVD alone will do little-to-no teaching.
Hi Leah,
First, congrats on baby Henry, he is beautiful. You may remember me from high school, we used to swim for Pirates together. I found your blog a few months ago and check in on it from time to time. I'm actually getting a PhD in child development and do research in language development and social learning from parents so your blog has been interesting to look in on. I felt compelled to reply to this particular post...
There is a recent study conducted on Baby Einstein followed 1000 kids who watched the tapes at various times. As stated above, most damaging to the child is leaving them unattended in front of the TV or using the videos as a virtual babysitter. Kids who watched the videos with parents who discussed and commented on them did much better. However, on the whole, watching the videos is highly correlated with ADD/ADHD. This makes perfect sense. In the videos, every 30 seconds something new and exciting pops up to entertain the child. This is not how real life works and is just teaching kids that they don't need to train their attention spans because as soon as they look away, something new will come to entertain. It's not that videos in general are bad, but the rapid scene changing in the Baby Einstein videos is particularly damaging. Other studies of videos have shown that with proper reinforcement from parents- infants 12-18m can pick some things up from videos, but between 18m and 3 yrs there is what's called a "video deficit" where children seem unable to recognize TV/Videos as relating to their lives and therefore don't learn from them. Work in my lab is currently examining what exactly is so hard about learning from TV and what aspects kids do understand.
Glad to see you're doing well...just thought I'd share my 2 cents on this since it hit close to home.
Hi Rachel! Good to hear from you! Wow, thanks for the info! Very interesting! I am always interested to hear what the experts say, so feel free to comment any time!
Post a Comment