The Chocolate Lady

Thursday, August 9, 2007

That's one more point for me

Halleluiah, there’s hope!

Have you heard the news? Baby Einstein doesn’t make your kids smarter, in fact, it makes them dumber! This is a huge relief to me, and it means my kids might have a shot at things in life.

I remember when Baby Einstein was all the rage. Whenever I visited with a mommy friend, she would inevitably have Baby Einstein (or Baby Mozart, or Monet) on with her baby propped up in front of the tv so that it couldn’t help but stare at the mobiles and toys and shapes accompanied by classical music. Everyone said it would make kids smarter, and more beautiful, and better behaved. They would talk sooner, be adept at foreign languages and math, it was really the thing to do if you wanted your child to succeed. I always felt guilty, like my kidlets would end up special ed, because I didn’t take the extra time to do all that fancy stuff like have them watch Baby Einstein, or put black and white patterns up in their crib.

I did try it. I got a Baby Einstein video as a gift when Pooper was born. I remember putting his car seat in front of the tv while it played. I kept waiting for him to do something remarkable, as if to show me immediate results from this intelligence producing program….but it never happened. He mostly slept. And I gave up.

Now just this week, I read that the whole thing is not what it’s cracked up to be. AND, to boot, (and here’s where I get a twinge of the, “na-na-na-na-na” ‘s) for each hour kids watched that stuff, they scored lower on verbal tests.

It makes sense. In the olden days, “experts” said to talk to your kids, don’t worry that you look like a fool in the grocery store having conversations with an infant, “yes, that’s the veggies, can you say veggies, veg-gies, yum!” Exposure to language was supposed to stimulate the brain, producing young talkers, which also was correlated to doing all kinds of things ahead of schedule.

Then some lady invented the Baby Einstein idea, that basically said, “don’t talk to your kids, just show them inanimate objects to music.” Come on, that doesn’t really make sense, how can they learn language if we don’t talk to them? See, I knew it all along, really, I did. That’s the whole reason I never forced my kidlets to watch all those artsy videos, I was, uh, smarter than that, yeah, that’s it, I knew it would slow them down, and since I always do what’s best for my kids, I made the sacrifice to avoid all things related to the Baby Einstein phenomenon.

Whew! I feel vindicated! One more point for me, for getting through this thing called motherhood.

**Have you taken the poll? and coming soon, a contest, to see who can come up with the best poll question, stay tuned! **

2 comments:

M said...

I didn't know you had a blog...so I guess us caringbridge folks find a place to go after cancer! I will check in often :)

I can't take part of your survey as I don't have "little" ones off to school...just big ones that I am sending off to college far away from home...and just one giant sophomore left at home :) ...and school starting means I go back to work...hmmm...not sure how happy I can be at that one.

HAPPY FRIDAY!!

Candace April said...

I was unimpressed with Baby Einstein. I also looked at "Classical Baby," which I like much better...but I just don't like the way my little acts on the rare occasion she's seen TV--like a zombie. Ick. So, no TV for her. She's a year old, and I have no plans to introduce her to the television any time soon.