If you have been buying Baby Einstein videos in the hopes of turning your child into a miniature genius, or even in the hopes of having a few minutes of peace, you may be interested in reading about the "The $165 Million Scam":
"Back when I was 8 months pregnant with Alex, my mother and I were washing windows outside. I lamented that 21-month-old Andie was getting in my way whenever I needed to do chores around the house. I wasn’t ready to resort to baby videos, but I completely empathized with parents needing their kids out of their hair. Having raised four girls without any educational videos, my mother’s response was simple: have them work along with you. I laughed, thinking surely she must have forgotten what it was like with little kids.
"’Think of your ancestors,’ she said to me as she filled up a bucket with soapy water. ‘What do you think the pioneers did with their children?’
[…]
"But it’s not just parents’ need for breaks that sells Baby Einstein. It’s the pressure we put on ourselves to create the optimum learning environment for our kids, from the minute they are home from the hospital.
[…]
But Dr. [Patricia] Kuhl’s most recent work proves videos ineffective in teaching babies foreign languages. In her July 2003 experiment, Kuhl showed that exposing 10-month-olds to videos and DVDs of native Mandarin Chinese speakers had zero effect on their language development. But if that video is replaced with a living, breathing, person speaking Mandarin, babies showed great learning of that language in a short time period, according to her report. Even though Aigner-Clark had good intentions with her language video, Baby Einstein does not teach babies foreign languages — only live people can do that. And without specifically mentioning the company or its products, Kuhl’s research actually debunks Baby Einstein‘s theory that certain videos could create little ‘Einsteins.’ In The Scientist in the Crib, the trend of making babies smarter is referred to as ‘pseudoscience,’ warning parents to be ‘deeply suspicious of any enterprise that offers a formula for making babies smarter or teaching them more, from flash cards to Mozart tapes … these artificial interventions are at best useless and at worst distractions from the normal interaction between grown-ups and babies’ (Kuhl, et. al., 201)."
Not to mention that using a video as an electronic babysitter or babytutor is a sure-fire way to turn your child into a television addict before he even learns to walk.
I mostly agree with the comments and the article, but… we do let our toddler watch (usually) 2 30-minute videos/shows per day. The purpose? First, the showers mentioned by some of the testimonials- there’s really not a good way to interact with your toddler when one of you (and it’s not the toddler) is in the shower. Second, we do use it for “down time” for him- we don’t view it as educational, we view it as giving everyone a physical break.
As for creating a TV addict- we believe, perhaps erroneously, that we will be able to tell him “No” in the future. We certainly do it now when he asks for a show outside of the above times.
I agree with Patrick. Some small amount of video watching can give a tired out parent a break. Our two-year-old loves Baby Einstein, although we have the colors tape, and the wild animals tape. She doesn’t watch it more than a few times a week, though, and it’s about a 20-minute tape, so hardly anything at all. Sometimes it can be really handy when you need to keep a child occupied for a short time. I don’t believe in using the TV as a babysitter, though.
Same as the commenters above… we don’t show the Baby Einstein videos to my 2 nieces because I expect them to become geniuses by watching them, but in order for them to calm down while I take a shower. It also helps them to fall asleep. They loved the videos, but we never show them more than once or maybe twice a day. I don’t believe in using the TV as babysitter either, but it does help to keep them entertained for a short while.
Finally, someone sees this thing like I do! People rave about these stupid little videos. And have you seen them? In one scene, the creators have a giraffe sock puppet appear on the screen for a few seconds, and then a clip of a real live giraffe is shown. Wow, how about making your own dang sock puppet and interacting with the kid for real…then take him to the zoo! Or, what about reading to your kid about a giraffe? That seems way more effective. Yes, I know people say the videos help the moms and all, but there was a time in the past when people didn’t have goofy videos like this, and the moms and kids did just fine.
Eh…sorry if I seemed a little wound up there. LOL I was just so excited to see something negative for once about BE. I know people who swear by it, but the videos just seem so cheesy to me. Can’t one parent interact with the child, while the other one takes a shower? I would much rather my baby interact with my husband when he comes home from work than be subjected to onscreen sock puppets. LOL
Well, for one thing- they show colors and figures and things they recognize. I don’t think the Baby Einstein videos are that bad, although we’ve moved onto shows with actual plots at this point (aka Thomas, Caillou).
But as 3 of us have noted, we can’t show our kids real live giraffes when we’re in the shower. For starters, my shower stall isn’t tall enough. On another point, the zoo would not appreciate it if I attempted to make dinner there. Also, this time of year the food would get cold.
I know, that’s not really the point. But people in the 1800s and early 1900s didn’t bathe every day. So the concept of a daily morning shower is 1) a notable difference in routine from generations past, and 2) a feeling of cleanliness that I, personally, am unwilling to give up.
We do plenty of reading, and interacting, and playing, and going outside marvelling at Creation. Down time with a video, properly dosed, can lower stress levels in a good way.
I really don’t see the need for either my husband or myself giving up daily showers, either. It’s not a huge fear for us.
So husbands and wives really weren’t able to take daily showers until BE came out a few years ago? Wow, it really is a Godsend.
Anyway, thanks Michelle for the post!
Thanks for the post, Jimmy. It’s 100% on target. The scam has to have bilked more money that 165 million, though.
The Baby Einstein videos [sic] definitely feed television addiction. And unlike nature shows on television (the one exception, in my view, to the dictum that television is the devil), they do not portray long, reflective shots – it’s quick-motion, one-frame-to-another shots of flashy, blinking, moving objects. A perfect recipe to shorten the attention span and create a TV addict for life.
I’ll continue the thankful sentiment that BE is not important. We were given a few videos when our first was born. I eventually popped one in and was quite shocked (yes SHOCKED) that all the video did was cycle through pictures of common everyday items. Most of those items were readily available in our house, INCLUDING the toys they displayed. I thought what a waste of money. It’s more interesting to show an actual toy and let the child PLAY with it instead of just sitting in front of the TV watching a still picture of it.
Now I’m sure many of the videos have added content harder to get (giraffes?), but I just couldn’t buy into the Baby Einstein craze. We returned all the BE videos we received.
As far as TV, our children are allowed some TV time. They are often shows on saints, educational shows (used to be Mr. Rogers), etc. My son enjoys watching shows on RFDTV about trains. It helps expands his imagination when playing with train toys.
While I completely agree that Baby Eistien overstates the values of their video, I think people can be overly critical of them as well. Note that the study was about language development not about shape recognition of music appreciation or a number of other potential advantages. This study doesn’t completely disprove that there is some value in the videos (nor is there any proof they help). I think the inclusion of lots of classical music is valuable and I often play classical music on the cd player as well. I also think the numerous mechanical demonstrations help their spacial understanding. Should this small amount of value compell parents to sit their kids in front of it 6 hours a day? Of course not! Is letting a child watch it a handful of times a week like my wife and I do going to harm the child? I think that’s a big stretch as well.
Yes, it’s important to take our children to the zoo and the park and the train museum (a BIG hit) and where ever else we think they’d enjoy/value. However, it’s not a black and white issue and not every moment of every day is going to be a perfect learning opportunity.
I think it is wiser to focus on the overall issue (TV addiction) than any specific video or else we risk criticism for going after the wrong (or over specific) target.
BTW, would you really want a Baby Einstein? He didn’t speak until he was three.
+J.M.J+
We have a few BE videos that we show the kids for “down time,” but I agree that they are not likely to turn kids into geniuses. In fact, we only use certain ones now, since I’ve decided that some of the videos are almost useless educationally.
There’s another set of videos called Baby Bumblebee, however, which IMO are actually a better than BE, education-wise. They focus on vocabulary building; again, they won’t make a kid brilliant, but they can be helpful. My daughter picked up some words from them before she turned two.
Oh, and I also am not surprised by the study that shows that videos cannot teach a baby a foreign language. To be fair, though, Aigner-Clark herself says that that is not the purpose of the videos. She quite clearly states at the end of the original BE video (now called Language Nursery) that the video “is not intended to teach your child foreign languages”. So her product is being criticized for not doing what she says it is not intended to do anyway!
In Jesu et Maria,
My opinion of the one Baby Einstein video that we own:
Many of the pictures paired with words (ie “cow”) in the vocab section are so unrealistic that I didn’t like my son to watch that part. (You know, the stuffed animal that adults can’t decide if it’s a bear or a cow or a giraffe or a dog. NOT helpful.)
Second, the classical music is a nice idea, but it’s all the keyboard stuff, no orchestra playing it. Again, this seems less than helpful to me. I think the point of playing classical music to kids is to instill in them an appreciation for good music. So it should be good quality.
Now that my son is three, we finally let him watch it, when he’s sick. Videos are indespensible when a kid is sick and you need them to just sit in one place and rest (and not get up and walk around the house and throw up on something that is not covered.)
But I never remember needing to put in a movie for him when I took a shower. Can’t they do something for 20 minutes? Play, or listen to a CD, or sit and do nothing…Do the kids tear up the house if you don’t put a movie on? Does your bathroom door have a lock?
Great idea–Books on tape! Libraries have tons.
Or try “Glory Stories” on CD:
http://www.catholicworldmission.org/site/pp.asp?c=9dJHJLPwB&b=400965
I have no kids, and I’ve never seen the BE videos or anything, but I do have a comment about educational TV in general. When I was growing up, there was a show on PBS called Electric Company that was designed to teach kids to read. My dad claims that that show actually did exactly that for me, so that by the time I hit school, I was way ahead of the game. So I don’t think TV is all evil for the little ones, though of course it can be overused.
Louise, it depends on the personality of the kids. Some you can leave for 20 minutes, others – DONT EVEN THINK ABOUT IT. I had a friend with a 3 year old whom she would lock in the bedroom, but he learned to shinny up the door frame to get the ‘key’ (you know, those little thinks you stick thru the hole in the knob and pick the lock with from the wrong side) from the top of the door frame and taught himself to pick the lock. He also climbed up to the top of the dryer, unplugged it, and stuck a fork in the socket. This is a kid you put a video on for! I have six and none are like that, but I can certainly see putting a video on for a few minutes of R and R with that one.
Mine ask questions relentlessly so I’ll put one on for a little respite now and then, but I find that if they listen to really good quality music it’s just as entertaining for them. They love to dance, as well as act out stories while listening to them. For music I recommend simple classical such as ensemble music rather than more complicated orchestral music. At our house it was more popular anyway. We aim for variety too, with bluegrass, classical, country, etc.
We got a BE video as a gift when my middle child was born. Not one of my kids watched it for more than 45 seconds. They were immediately bored.
If I have to make a phone call or pee or something and I need my kids to be stationary for 5-10 minutes, I put on one of the PBS programs in SPANISH. I heard of a guy from Mexico who taught himself English by watching U.S. kids programs like Sesame Street, so I figure, what the heck. If they pick up a Spanish word or two while I get something done that I need to do solo, we all come out ahead.
School House Rock and other “educational” inserts between cartoons (instead of commercials) on ABC Saturday mornings when I was a kid (mid – late 70’s) really did teach me a few things.
I still know the Preamble by heart because of it. Also, I no longer “drown” my food and I try to avoid being a “Yuck Mouth”.
I did’t have TV when most of my kids were little.
I let them play in the bathroom while I took a shower; sometimes I put infant in playpen to be safe from Toddler and let Toddler play with the bath toys on the floor in the bathroom while I took a quick shower. Or I showered with toddler in the tub with me. Actually a lot of the time I didn’t have a working shower and took baths, usually with a couple of kids in with me, if not, with a couple in the bathroom next to me.
But yes, a toddler can come to significant harm or do significant harm, not just while you take a shower, but even while you “go to the bathroom.”
I had a toddler and a three year old that we called the “Terror Team” The toddler would start doing a typical toddler thing like pulling all the books off the bottom shelf; the three year old would copy the behavior, but could climb up and get the books off all the shelves. They could get hundreds of books on the floor in a few minutes. Once when I went to the bathroom they managed to pour most of the contents of one kitchen cupboard out on the kitchen table in a few minutes. Another time they smeared a 5 lb jar of peanut butter all over the kitchen, on the exposed bricks, in the heat grates, everywhere.
I am sure if Baby Einstein had existed then and if I had a VCR, I would have resorted to them.
I had other kids who never did this kind of stuff. Sometimes if you luck out with one or two kids, you think you are an excellent parent and your kids would never do X, but then if you have a few more, one of them does do X, sure enough. (I had 9)
I would think that parents who conscientiously use something like Baby Einstein just to amuse a child for 20 minues are not harming their children. Of course they aren’t making them geniuses either. There is probably a temptation to use stuff like this, kids shows on TV etc, too much rather than interacting. It is important to know how much better for kids interacting with parents-and older brothers and sisters too, is than watching TV or videos,no matter how “educational.” The writers here are clearly all aware of that.
Susan Peterson
forget BE. Just sit your kid in front of the computer screen and read to them the daily post from Jimmy and friends. They will be ready to defend the faith better than most grow-ups by the time they hit preschool.
Notice all the excuses. Indeed, television truly is the soma of this Brave New World.
My goal is to have my oldest boy doing laundry and loading the dishwasher by age 3…that way when my “terror team” comes along, I’ll have some backup when I have to do crowd control!
Susan, you’re my hero!
My wife and I saw these videos at my father’s house, when he was raising my half-sister. I couldn’t believe 1) that this was the form of child-rearing my father and his new wife were resorting to, and 2) how inane and brainless these videos were.
My wife and I decided that we were not going to get these DVDs for our children. When my wife got pregnant, we received no fewer than 3 of these from various people. We returned them for store credit and instead bought some Lamaze and Leapfrog toys, as well as building blocks with letters on them.
Besides, my wife and I suspect (half tongue-in-cheek) that the BE DVDs are subtle brainwashing of the children (and parents – it’s subliminal and running in the background) to keep buying more Disney products and BE DVDs. 🙂
There are some DVD’s that helped babies to develop visual language. Like my daughter who is 21 months old. She’s already know about 100 signs for the words. Every time I asked her by signing, she does respond. When she’s hungry, she signed hungry. When she’s full, she signed “full” and signed “finished”. It does entertain us as well! It helped to lessen tantrums because babies often frustrated communicate with their parents by baby gibberish talks. Signs does help to know what my daughter wanted and also develop earlier visual vocabulary. Babies do learn verbal vocabulary and talk gibberish. While at that, best to have them to learn sign language.
I am glad I don’t regret for teaching my daughter the signs. Baby Einstien is a flap, but signing times isn’t!
Go to http://www.signingtime.com/ for the Baby Signing Time DVDs There’s online demo video on that site.
Good Luck!