Baby Einsteins: Not So Smart After All
The claim always seemed too good to be true: park your infant in front of a video and, in no time, he or she will be talking and getting smarter than the neighbor's kid. In the latest study on the effects of popular videos such as the "Baby Einstein" and "Brainy Baby" series, researchers find that these products may be doing more harm than good. And they may actually delay language development in toddlers.
Led by Frederick Zimmerman and Dr. Dimitri Christakis, both at the University of Washington, the research team found that with every hour per day spent watching baby DVDs and videos, infants learned six to eight fewer new vocabulary words than babies who never watched the videos. These products had the strongest detrimental effect on babies 8 to 16 months old, the age at which language skills are starting to form. "The more videos they watched, the fewer words they knew," says Christakis. "These babies scored about 10% lower on language skills than infants who had not watched these videos."
This little data point I found particularly frightening:
Last spring, Christakis and his colleagues found that by three months, 40% of babies are regular viewers of DVDs, videos or television; by the time they are two years old, almost 90% are spending two to three hours each day in front of a screen.
Can you say ADHD?
His group has found that the more television children watch, the shorter their attention spans later in life. "Their minds come to expect a high level of stimulation, and view that as normal," says Christakis, "and by comparison, reality is boring."
Parents do matter.
He and other experts worry that the proliferation of these products will continue to displace the one thing that babies need in the first months of life — face time with human beings. "Every interaction with your child is meaningful," says Christakis. "Time is precious in those early years, and the newborn is watching you, and learning from everything you do." So just talk to them; they're listening.
My kids have watched more tv than I would have liked, but we have tried to limit it. We started by moving the tv to the room above the garage. When it wasn't in the middle of the house, we just watched it less. When it was in a room that I couldn't leave little kids unsupervised, my kids watched a whole lot less.
We use a lot of educational videos with our big kids as part of our homeschooling. I wonder if there is a down side to that as well.
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Related Tags: homeschool, educational DVDs, child development, television
4 comments:
I think interaction with parents is the big thing that contributes to intelligence.
By the time Eldest was talking he not only knew all the primary colors he knew shades like cyan, fuchsia, and mint green because I kept up a running monologue when I did the laundry.
"This is a fuchsia washcloth, fuchsia is a shade of pink. Pink is a lighter shade of Red. You mix Red & White to make Pink. You use washcloths to wash your face." Who knew he listened.
As homeschoolers, I believe our children are less likely to be negatively impacted by a limited amount of television-watching simply because they are getting way more one-on-one or very small group interaction time. Most kids spend 30+ hours per week in a large-group setting, much of which is passive listening to a teacher lecturing. So if one adds another 10 hours of TV-watching, that really takes away from their opportunities for parental interaction. For us homeschoolers, it's not so much of a problem.
Besides, if you're like me, you're watching alongside the kids while you're matching socks or paying bills or whatever. That way, you are able to discuss the program afterwards & they're not just vegging out in front of the tube, KWIM?
>Besides, if you're like me, you're watching alongside the kids while you're matching socks or paying bills or whatever.
That's a good idea. My children talk a lot about the what they are watching, but I don't watch with them as much as I could.
>"This is a fuchsia washcloth, fuchsia is a shade of pink. Pink is a lighter shade of Red. You mix Red & White to make Pink. You use washcloths to wash your face." Who knew he listened.
My next door neighbor did that with her kids. I would walk with her while we pushed our babies in the strollers. She was a nonstop dialogue. Normally, when I would push the baby in the stroller, it was my quiet time and I didn't have the energy to talk.
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