Cotton-Pickin’ Days

You hit the state of “needing to educate our children – NOW!” right on it’s head. People are so concerned about making their kids learn something everyday, that they forget that everything is best in moderation. I am willing to bet that parents who force feed their children data everyday get the same or lower retention rates than parents who divide play time and learning time throughout the day. That being said, I am known to be a little overzealous in the teaching department, but I blame it on societal pressures I am going to link you on my blog, thanks for the good read!

-Amanda-
Kid Tricks

They picked the wrong kids. My twins watched those videos and I cannot get them to SHUT UP! They count to 10 in 4 different languages and can spell (much to our consternation when we try to spell out T-O-Y). [I'm not trying to brag here ... really] And which 6-8 words are they missing? I’ll trade ‘gimme!’ and ‘MINE!’ for ‘obedience’ or ‘integrity’ any day.

I am fascinated and appalled at the response to this study. The company has a brilliant marketing strategy selling itself as educational videos, implying, if not stating that the stimulation it provides is beneficial. This study, and all the other studies that the APA based their “NO TV UNDER 2″ policy simply says no, it is _not_ beneficial, and is possibly harmful to brain development.

What amazes me are the two main protectionist reactions.

1) “I did it and my kids are fine!” You have a single data point without any regard to the controls they may have had in place, and this must trump the study. Brilliant.

2) “yeah, it may not be good per se, but its so convenient for me! how else am i ever to relax?” One of the major concerns about the videos is the effect of over-stimulation – the world in comparison is boring, and the child begins to have a most constant need of aggressive outside stimuli to be entertained. There is also the effect of interference with the way the brain processes the notion of object permanence that they believe is a major reason children subjected to a lot of tv under that age of 2 are at greater risk for ADHD in later years. Perhaps you would be in less need of relaxation if you taught your child from an early age to entertain himself.

as to your particular reaction i have the following points

1) displacement of other activities was not the sole cause of the lower vocabulary. Part of it was the brains reaction to the media itself.

2)music cd’s and flashcards were not under the scope of the study. just the videos.

3) As to not imagining that any parent would let their kid watch tv all day – the study found that by the age of 2 90% of the children in the area were watching between 2-3 hours of tv a day. its a ways from all day, but it is an appalling amount of it.

4)6-8 words a day fewer means that their brain is less capable of retaining that many words, due possibly to lower attention and lower absorption of details. The usefulness of the words are not the issue, the change in the way the brain behaves is.

This is one of many studies of its kind. I’m not saying you should obsess about every move your child makes, but I do think you should not dismiss it out of hand because it is inconvenient.

We didn’t have Baby Einstein when my kids were young, nor would I have bought them. But I somehow inadvertently taught my one-year-old to read, before she could even talk. She’d sit in my lap while I made grocery lists, etc., and I started writing words she knew. Soon she could pick them out on command, a neat game we used to play.

One day we took an airplane trip with Grandma, and when we played our game, Grandma had everyone on the plane watching by baby “read”. It was very embarrassing, so after that I didn’t play those reading games anymore. She eventually picked up reading on her own.

I think babies (human and not–have you seen the bonobo video?) are a lot smarter than we give them credit for, and to think that any game or toy or video that purports to teach them will make them smarter is shortchanging their natural intelligence. It’s only making what they already know more evident to us.

For instance, my daughter could point to a picture of a cat when asked several months before she learned to “read” the word cat. That’s not such a big leap, from picture to word representation. The big leap involves seeing a real cat and realizing the picture, and later the word, all refer to the living, moving creature we call a cat.

I later discovered David Elkind and his teachings on early childhood education, which I recommend if they’re still out there.

not being a parent….i LOVE baby einstein. i will only babysit very small children, if their parents have those tools in their arsenal.

once the dvd starts, i am mesmerized! neither of us (me or the kid), can take our eyes off of the television.

they hypnotize you. it does really good things for my focus. maybe i should have my own little daily einstein sessions. perhaps i would be a little more productive if i did. although, i could only limit it to 15 minutes a day. if i didn’t have a timer, i probably would sit on my sofa all day long, watching that series.

I am not addicted to regular tv…just weird psychedelic stuff like B.E.

I guess my last comment does give the impression that if baby einstein is playing, the kid may be neglected.

thats not entirely true. i am a very fun babysitter. i just happen to enjoy an occasional trip provided by a dvd made for children.

My grandson would watch the Eistein videos as an infant. We thought we were helping him. At 2 1/2 he was diagnosed autistic. He had no speech. I purchased Brainy Baby and Baby Bumpblee DVD’s and within a few months he was babbling. We continued to have him watch the videos and he now at almost 3 knows his whole alphabet frontward and backwards, his color and numbers to 20 and can even write every letter of the alphabet. Also, the amount of words he knows has increased.

I think the doctors need to do more research.