A new study quoted by the LA Times says that the popular “Baby Einstein” videos don’t work—and may even stunt your child’s vocabulary.
From the LATimes:
For every hour a day that babies 8 to 16 months old were shown such popular series as “Brainy Baby” or “Baby Einstein,” they knew six to eight fewer words than other children, the study found.
Parents aiming to put their babies on the fast track, even if they are still working on walking, each year buy hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of the videos.
Unfortunately it’s all money down the tubes, according to Dr. Dimitri Christakis, a professor of pediatrics at the University of Washington in Seattle.
Christakis and his colleagues surveyed 1,000 parents in Washington and Minnesota and determined their babies’ vocabularies using a set of 90 common baby words, including mommy, nose and choo-choo.
The researchers found that 32% of the babies were shown the videos, and 17% of those were shown them for more than an hour a day, according to the study in the Journal of Pediatrics.
The videos, which are designed to engage a baby’s attention, hop from scene to scene with minimal dialogue and include mesmerizing images, like a lava lamp.
None of us have babies or anything, but we’ve never known anyone who got smarter staring at a lava lamp. The study says parents who read to their children or talk to them have better vocabularies. “I would rather babies watch ‘American Idol’ than these videos,” Christakis said. Harsh.
‘Baby Einstein’: a bright idea? [LA Times] (Thanks, James!)
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@floofy:
Studies show for each hour of television watched per day before age 3, a child’s reading comprehension and short-term memory scores fell at age 6 and 7. See above for citation.
@suckonthat:
My “generalized conjecture” comes from the American Academy of Pediatrics. When you graduate medical school, get a medical license, and convince all the other Pediatricians your point of view, then I’ll listen to your story. Until then, I’ll go with their recommendation of no television for children under 3, including educational shows.
@dancemonkey:
Your disdain for modern science, modern studies, and modern medicine shows a lack of critical thinking and poor judgement. I feel sorry for your children, as they will likely be as stupid as you are.
@Eyebrows McGee:
Television has been around for less than a hundred years. Parents have successfully raised children without it since the dawn of time. If you require a television as a parent to entertain your child, teach your child, or keep your child busy, then you are missing something.
I’m sort of amused by the shrill, “My wife won’t ever be able to shower for the next eighteen years if we can’t squat our litter in front of the idiot box when we please.” Geez, duct tape and Niquill, people! Or learn basic time management. Or, HUSBAND, maybe you ought to get off the couch and mind the kids so your wife can have a few hours of adult activity per day?
I have three kids under five and all have loved the Baby Einstein videos. My eldest showed great language advances and the BE videos did help. I know this because most of her first words were related to animals from the video.
I can’t say I have seen the same response from my younger ones, though.
And yes, you have to watch them and interact your kid, people. Just plopping them down and expecting them to learn is just stupid.
It’s sad that what I might assume are intelligent people can reduce themselves to such arrogant banter over this topic. Nonetheless, this study does prove suspicions I have held all along–too many American consumers have been duped by the name “Baby Einstein,” and have mistakenly and naively associated A. Einstein’s genius qualities with baby dvds. I am a mother of a 16 month old, and I refused to fall for this gimmick.
Our son has an English vocabulary of 20+ words, with enounciation that make us proud. He learns German from his dad–a native speaker. And the bottom line–I credit all the time my mom and we spend talking to him (not baby talk) and reading with him.
Rather than putting down anyone else’s means of entertaining his or her child, let us all agree on this–it is never too early to expose a baby to books. A baby turning pages of a cloth or board book learns the first reading concepts. Let TV be an occasional treat, but beware that it is too mesmerizing for adults, let alone impressionable infants!
@scarequotes:
Actually, it does matter. When my daughter was 16 months old she would sit quietly in front of Finding Nemo. However, she would actually interact with Dora the Explorer. But, I would also interact with her, and encourage her to talk about what’s on the screen, and to play along with each little quiz. Keep in mind you also want to avoid commercials, and perhaps things you personally disagree with. A mitt full of good DVDs is probably of a lot more practical, and fulfilling than cable TV.
@XopherMV:
There are also studies that show it’s beneficial in helping the parent interact with a child under 3. Much like you can go to the park and talk about ducks, or point out planes to them. You’ve gotta treat it like a book with moving pictures, and keep the kid the center of attention. No different than a book, or deck of flash cards.
I think the Leap Frog videos helped my daughter a lot with her letter sounds. Also gave single-dad here some more ways to entertain his kid.
@Eyebrows McGee:
I wonder what people would think of my wife’s abilities as an early childhood educator if every so often she decided to “withdraw for 15 minutes to regain her adult equilibrium”. She probably wouldn’t have the parents of every incoming student fighting to get into her kindergarten class.
And no, there are no videos or A/V hour at her school. 100% interaction with 20 kids from eight in the morning until four in the afternoon.
And yes, she thinks Baby Einstein videos are garbage.
All you people that are members of the “Perfect Parents Club” (i.e no kids of their own), need to chill the hell out. Letting a kid watch 15 minutes of TV every so often will not rot their brains no matter what the eegheads at the AAP say (I’m looking at you XOPHERMV). Also, news flash, it’s OK to take a kid to McDonalds every now and again and to let them have some candy once in a while. The key is to do that stuff in moderation.
Plopping your kid down in front of the TV for 6 hours = bad parent.
Turning on the TV for 30 minutes to be able to bathe = good parent.
Preaching to people about how they are crappy parents for allowing their child to look at a TV instead of interacting with the 24 x 7 just makes you sound like a sanctimonious jackass.
@Peeved Guy: Agreed, wholeheartedly. I’m willing to bet that at more than one point before I turned 3 I was exposed to some TV – maybe even more than 15 minutes at a time! I was also reading in preschool, was light years ahead of the rest of the kids in kindergarten, and was bored to tears in first grade when we were learning basic vocabulary. I think I turned out pretty well, idiot box notwithstanding.
My niece occasionally gets to watch one of these videos, but she also spends every weekday in engaging day care with one of two sets of doting grandparents (she’s the long-awaited first grandchild in the family). She has stacks of board books, she’s read to every day, and she loves it when my dad plays banjo or guitar for her. I’m not going to worry too much about the fact that she gets 15 minutes of supervised TV time every once in a while.
Well here’s my take on it based on some limited exposure to psych and behavioral psych.
There’s basically 2 kinds of kinds programs, big suprise here, the good ones and the bad ones.
The bad ones use strobe effects, and fast cuts to pretty much hold the child in front of the tv mesmerized for use of a better word. They’re not watching because of whats being presented as much as the flashing colors. Never seen the baby enstien stuff, but teletubies was horribly for the blinky, blinky approach.
Then there’s the goos ones, like Sesamie Street or Dora, that actually try to engage the child on some level.
That being said the difference between just watching a good program and a bad program is negligible. The child gets the best benefit if they’re watching with someone and forced/ encouraged to actively follow along with what the program is covering.
Any learning program on it’s own is useless for learning, if tehy’re used in addition to other things then they provide some (not much) benefit.
Yeah, before withdrawing from this discussion (ie, canceling the comment subscription) I just wanted to pop back in again with some thoughts I had overnight.
But before I do THAT, @XOPHERMV it’s not a disdain for science, it’s a disdain for people who feel that studies should raise children. Parents raise children, and every parental situation is different. A scientific study is not predictive of the future, it is an aggregate of the average. You will apparently never understand that, so I think we’re done.
The last few posters have said it the best, so just read the three above me.
The bottom line is: If you’re not a parent at all, you have no place in this comment thread. Seriously. I’m sorry, that includes the early childhood educators. Do you know why? Because while I agree that the parents of your children would not like you to take a 15-minute sanity break, you get to clock out once your day’s work is done.
I will submit this to the group and then not give a shit what the reaction is. Raising one child is harder (and more rewarding) than teaching 15. Not to diminish the importance of teachers at all, but the point is that it’s just different. YOu will never know how until you’re a parent yourself.
And yes, we have a baby einstein video about animals, books about animals, and a membership to the zoo. Oh. My. God. I thought those were all mutually exclusive! To hear the parentless commenters here you would think that were the case.
I’m going to take my dumb baby now, give him a bowl of ice cream, plop him down in front of the TV with some matches and firecrackers and go snort some blow off of his Baby Einstein DVD jewel case.
@dancemonkey: “If you’re not a parent at all, you have no place in this comment thread.”
Just curious, how long after childbirth does one receive their license to be a sanctimonious ass?
The only one of those videos that might be worth anything is the sign language video. Other than that, as a parent of a 5 month old who actually has these videos (got them as a gift from my father-in-law), I feel they are perfectly good videos to keep my son distracted while the wife and i get some housework done..
yeah, housework.. that’s the ticket!
I see nothing wrong with a parent putting in a DVD for their kids If it gives them a moment to SHOWER and wash off the funk….or start DINNER without the kids hanging on their leg.
/I’m sick of hearing other parents say how fucking “gifted” there kid is! No your little bastard isn’t! Baby Einstein is capitalizing on parents desire to have a “gifted” kid they can brang about.
//Their Orwellian marketing strategy is effective. Reading videos splashed with words like “interactive,” “developmental,” and “enriching” enough times, parents easily get sucked in. Who wouldn’t want an interactive, developmental and enriching experience for their babies?
@ikes: Re-read the all of the comments in this thread and you will see that the sanctimonious asses are not bound by parental obligation. If fact most seem to be those without children.
@XopherMV: “Television has been around for less than a hundred years. Parents have successfully raised children without it since the dawn of time. If you require a television as a parent to entertain your child, teach your child, or keep your child busy, then you are missing something.”
People have lived in small nuclear family groups rather than extended family groups for about the same length of time. Parents today simply don’t have the familial support structures they had in the past, and in many families, both parents must work as well.
If you are so privileged that you can afford to have a stay at home parent or to hire home help, or so lucky as to have a strong support system, you are far ahead of the majority of parents in the lottery of parenting.
Incidentally, I don’t have children and we don’t keep a TV in the living or sleeping areas of the house specifically because we DON’T think TV should be nearly so present in our lives as it seems to be in many people’s. I was not raised in a home where children watched television, and I don’t really intend to raise my children, if I have any, watching television.
However, every child, every parent, and every family is different. If you’re going to stand there and tell a mother struggling with a toddler, an infant, and post-partum depression that putting her toddler in front of Bob the Builder for 15 minutes to try to head off a serious episode of depression makes her a BAD PARENT or is doing damage to her child’s development? You’re a jerk. And you’re feeding the kind of “parenting as competition” mentality and “perfect child” goal that is bad for both parents participating and the children subjected to it. You’re also working not to support parents who apparently don’t have the babysitting/child care sharing resources you have and who obviously need support but to tear them down and make them feel more defensive and isolated.
My last doctor, incidentally, when she had a serious case of the flu, no available child care, and two active toddlers? SHE LET THEM WATCH DISNEY MOVIES (the horror! the shame!), knowing full well what the AMA says about children and television and fully supporting it. People do what they have to do.
@Caswell: “I wonder what people would think of my wife’s abilities as an early childhood educator if every so often she decided to “withdraw for 15 minutes to regain her adult equilibrium”.”
Totally false analogy, as she has a) 5-year-olds, not infants or toddlers and b) an 8-hour-a-day job, not a 24-hour-a-day parenting situation.
OK, wow, lots of comments here….
I am in the it’s OK crowd. My 3 yr old outgrew these over a year ago. They are not educational as they instruct on the video.
I am not going to put in one of these and sit in front of the TV and teach my class….
I now have an 8 mo. old too, so the baby einsteins are back in our life and the 3 year old STILL likes these. She did not develop speech problems from baby einstein, she knows the objects, animals and places in the videos. That is good.
There were times with a sick baby up in the middle of the night, that the distraction of one of these baby crack was the only thing to soothe the baby.
And about putting your kid in a exersaucer, etc in front of these for hours, don’t know about your kids, but after a half hour in a saucer, bouncy, etc. My kids will have no more of that…
Thanks Julie Clark…
My nonexistant children won’t be watching tv for as long as I can help it.
I’m a bit late to the party, but I just wanted to add this story:
Years ago, I was a cognitive development researcher. My area of investigation was the ability of preverbal or minimally verbal children to categorize items. I performed a little puppet show for my volunteer subjects, 11-month to one-year-olds (with their parents,) and assessed their reactions.
The most common question? “Will this make my baby smarter?” My answer: “No, we’re just assessing abilities they already have.”
Parent: “Do you have IQ tests for babies?”
Me: “Can your baby read?”
“We use Baby Mozart and Baby Einstein, so my child should be better at this task than other children.”
Etc., etc.
The whole industry of products that give babies a “performance edge” is just that, an industry. My opinion on the matter is that Baby Einstein and all its associated products are ineffective at increasing vocabulary or anything else they’re purported to increase- they’re a product that assuages any worries a parent has that he or she is not doing enough to stimulate their baby’s development. Baby Einstein also taps into the need for some people to have the best, smartest baby.
I’m not claiming that there’s anything overwhelmingly harmful about the product, just don’t expect the videos themselves to have any effect. The time a parent or caretaker spends interacting with a baby, whether reading, just talking, or watching television, is most beneficial. Like I always said about the babies I tested or the Special Education kids I tested later on, the best thing is to let a child be a child, and not impose adult concerns about performance or intelligence on the child.
@XopherMV: I’ll tell you what. Instead, why don’t I just finish my phd and continue to work with labs that explicitly study child development, including eye movements and learning. Oh and I’ll also continue to talk to my sister who teaches kindergarten and knows this stuff. And of course, stay close with my pediatrician cousin and md/phd roommate.
And when I have children, I will continue to USE MY OWN JUDGEMENT and not government agencies (who constantly change their minds) to tell me what is best for my child. I believe these are the same people that were screaming that television ruins children’s eyesight and quietly redacted that.
@jediren: “There were times with a sick baby up in the middle of the night, that the distraction of one of these baby crack was the only thing to soothe the baby.”
You literally took the words out of my mouth. (well not literally, but figuratively).
There is a certain developmental age where pre-verbal and peri-verbal kids are entirely entranced by these, and at that stage (which tends to parallel the time many kids go through a cholicky phase) these are an invaluable tool to ensure that a parent can get enough rest to properly care for and interact with their child during the waking part of the day.
A good way to make sure that the child doesn’t kill itself while you’re trying to make dinner is by giving them something you’re working on and make them think they’re helping with dinner. I remember my mother used to hand me little balls of dough while she rolled out tortillas for dinner. I thought she was helping, I was in her sight, and I was so busy “making tortillas” that I wasn’t sticking my head in the oven, a finger in a light socket, or cracking my head on a glass table.
I think if I remember correctly something I once read or saw, Sesame Street was originally voted against because it had (relatively) rapid cuts, flashes, and insane fast-talking puppets. Of course, compared to the stuff today, they’re slow-pokes.
@Eyebrows McGee:
It’s an entirely appropriate analogy. In no situation should an adult resort to essentially mesmerizing a child with videos that expolit the devloping mind’s predisposition to following quick-changing scenes in order to “withdraw to regain their adult equilibrium”.
The companies the produce these videos know exactly what they’re doing. Nearly every adult, childless or not, has seen children go braindead in front of the idiot box when the kids’ DVD de jour is on. If you have to resort to that with one child or 20, 24/7 or 40 hours a week, you’re doing something wrong.
active teaching and engagement of the child is ALWAYS better than the Baby Couch Potato videos.
This was covered by CBC a couple of years ago.
[www.cbc.ca]
It sounds as though these products were not designed with any help from pediatricians or child psychologists. Pure marketing.
According to my folks when I was a baby, (back in the 80′s) that it is much more helpful for a child’s language development if the parents speak normally rather than in baby talk.
My dad read to me and my sister almost every night before bed when I was little, and all throughout school my sister and I were always ahead of the other students in reading. Alot of the customers I deal with are retirees and they all are shocked by how well-spoken I am for being a 23 year old. My sister graduated top of her class in High School.
I guess reading to your kids before bed every night does something. Because I remember watching alot more TV than should have been allowed…however for some reason while all my friends were enamored with Ninja Turtles and Power Rangers, I grew up watching Star Trek and Babylon 5.
An economical, educational handheld for littlies in a smoothy green. I love it.60 bux, what a bargain. It comes in pink-and-purple too, but please, don’t buy that for your girls. Give them green, teach them that non-pink things are also girl-things.