Baby Einstein, useful if not enriching

The New York Times seems concerned that the Baby Einstein DVD's are dumbing down America six words at a time:

Op-Ed Contributor
The Genius of ‘Baby Einstein’
By LISA GUERNSEY
August 16, 2007

I know I shouldn’t admit to playing baby videos for my children, but allow me to embarrass myself. “Baby Mozart� was part of my first child’s life when she was all of 3 months old. She was a colicky baby, despite my hours of walking her, nursing her and singing to her. The video didn’t always work — and the calm never lasted much longer than 15 minutes — but I was desperate.

Back then, in 2002, there was no research on whether these videos lived up to their billing of being good for babies’ cognitive development. But now a survey by researchers at the University of Washington, just published in The Journal of Pediatrics, has found that for every hour of baby-video viewing per day, children ages 8 to 16 months knew six to eight fewer words than those who watched no videos.

The report conjured images of 8-month-olds strapped into bouncy chairs, forced to watch an endless loop of video flashcards while listening to the tinkling of classical piano.

It’s not a pretty picture, but it’s not the whole picture either, thankfully. Videos are indeed being shown in many households with young children. And yes, some parents mistakenly believe that the videos are going to ratchet up their children’s I.Q. But watching hours and hours of baby videos is not the norm.

Only 17 percent of 384 babies in the survey were put in front of videos for an hour or more each day. The average baby watched only about 9 minutes a day. Data from the Kaiser Family Foundation suggests that the national average may be a bit higher — about 13 minutes a day. And babies’ total screen time, including television, DVDs and even computers, according to Kaiser, is higher still — about 49 minutes per day. But the alarming finding from the University of Washington survey applied only to baby videos. Television time, in contrast, seemed to have no effect, good or bad, on babies this young.

Meanwhile, today’s babies also spend nearly an hour a day playing outside, on average, and more than 30 minutes being read to, according to the Kaiser data. Child advocates wish those numbers were higher, but even so, it’s clear that most babies’ routines are not dominated by videos.

Over the past two years, I’ve examined the research on how videos, television and other media affect young children and interviewed scores of parents from many walks of life, and I’ve learned that it helps to consider what I call the three C’s: content, context and the individual child.

Most video content is nearly meaningless to babies less than a year old. (Though there is some evidence that they can imitate on-screen actions, it isn’t until they reach 18 to 24 months that they really start to comprehend what they see.) What matters is context and the child’s developmental needs.

Parents who think about context make sure that videos don’t become a substitute for happy moments of interaction and play. They still take their babies to the playground, build towers with them on the floor and read to them. Many studies, including the new one about baby videos, show that a daily dose of reading helps with language development. It doesn’t take a degree in rocket science to realize that babies need the social interaction that comes with reading — the pointing and labeling, the back-and-forth conversation. Children left alone to watch objects flashing on the TV screen aren’t getting that.

Yet in real life, not every minute of the day can be filled with reading, especially to babies who might rather put the books in their mouths. Sometimes parents watch along with their babies. Sometimes they use videos to get a quick break — to take a shower, clean out the cat’s litter box or steal a look at e-mail messages. Taking care of babies and toddlers is hard work. While videos aren’t a perfect answer, I can tell you that once in a while, they have kept an exhausted mother from going off the deep end.

So just go easy on video flashcards and don’t be misled into thinking they are going to turn your child into a prodigy. Read to and talk to your infant each day. It’s a strategy that many parents already follow. Maybe I shouldn’t be so embarrassed after all.

Lisa Guernsey is the author of the forthcoming “Into the Minds of Babes: How Screen Time Affects Children From Birth to Age Five.�

I, too, used Baby Einstein to take a shower. My daughter had horrible separation anxiety, and short of taking her into the shower with me each time, which she hated, she would sit outside the shower door and scream bloody murder for being "left" a few inches from me in her bouncer.

Turn on Baby Einstein, though, and she would watch with intensity and not utter a peep, and I could take a shower without feeling like I was torturing my child. Do I buy into the theory that this harmed her language or intellect in any way? Absolutely not. She had very advanced language skills from the start. I really doubt if anyone else uses Baby Einstein to teach their child anything, it is just an easy way to get some peace and quiet in an otherwise harried day.

I refuse to feel guilty about parking her in front of Baby Einstein every morning, when I spent the rest of the day playing, teaching, reading, and shuttling her to classes. Nor do I feel guilty now that she watches more Little Einsteins or Dora than I would like. I think it's all about balance, and getting Mommy clean, showered and pumped full of coffee each day does not negate the rest of the quality time you spend with your child.

To say that the children don't learn anything from their TV shows is ridiculous, too. My daughter learned to count to five in Spanish from Dora, the Count taught her to count to 12 on Sesame Street, and Elmo potty trained her before she was two. I think we beat ourselves up too much, and anything in moderation is fine.

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