Baby Einstein videos… 0
No-TV proponents… er, well, zero!
If you read the headlines, that’s not quite the outcome you anticipated. With titles like “Baby Wordsworth Babies: Not Exactly Wordy,” “Baby Einstein Failing to Make Grade” and “Educational DVD Don’t Help Toddlers Language” you would expect to read about dire consequences for letting you babies watch a Baby Einstein video. It seems the media outlets want to point their fingers at the evil DVD’s, when in fact, the University of California, Riverside study concluded something most moms already know: no matter how educational kids TV shows or video are advertised, they can’t do what moms and dads do best.
What the study points out is that the Little Einstein Baby Wordsworth DVD was no better -- or worse – at teaching language skills to 12 to 24 month olds. The University of California, Riverside study is the first definitive study that used a true testing criteria, rather than observational responses. For that, UC Riverside must be applauded. Up to this point, all other studies about infants and television watching have been antidotal, which in my estimate isn’t very… ah, scientific.
UC Riverside psychologist Rebekah Richert tracked 96 infants and their parents for six weeks. The infants were place in two groups, one watching the Baby Wordsworth DVDs and second as a control group that did not watch the kids’ video. The infants were tested four times during that study for 30 targeted words used in the video. In the end, watching the DVDs didn’t make a difference in teaching language to the infants. “We found that over the course of six weeks, the children watching the DVDs didn’t learn any more words than children not watching,” said Richert as reported by Time.com.
What many of the media reports skimmed over is what did work in that study: the interaction between babies and parents. Richert and her team of researchers found that when parents and their children’ watched the DVD’s together, the babies did learn. “What we are finding in our study is that the DVD itself is not a substitute for that kind of live social interaction,” said Richert. “For children under the age of two, social interaction is key to their ability to learning something like words.”
That’s the message I hope to share at KidsTVShowsBlog.com and one that I’ve talked about in my rules for watching television with your children. As the mom of two and grandmother of one, I know from experience, there are no kids TV shows or videos that can take my place as the primary teacher to my children.
Watching educational television and videos – and especially the Baby Einstein video – should be one of many tools a parent can use. If anything, these educational videos are great primers for parents, providing examples of how to work with their own children. I personally like the Baby Einstein Baby Wordsworth DVDs. They use visual, words, music and repeatability. The same techniques parents can use when helping their own baby learn words.
The point here is kids TV shows and educational videos should be fun and should not be depended upon to do a parents’ job. After all, what mom wants to miss the opportunity of being part of her child’s first words.
Let me know how you're using televsion and videos like the Little Einstein sereies.
Image by: Wynand Delport @ sxc.hu
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