Mothering Magazine March-April 2009
growing child education
The $165 Million Scam: What Parents Should Know about Disney's Baby Einstein By Anne Anderson Walker Web Exclusive
Nearly all of my decisions about parenting have come from the gut. I read to my babies because I just felt it was the right thing to do. And even though other mothers looked at me like I was crazy, I didn't use pacifiers because I wanted my babies to learn how to comfort themselves. But the most uncommon parenting decision was the one I made about television. I decided early on that my children, who are now one and three, would not watch TV or videos.
As most parents know, baby videos have become the latest trend in raising children. The most popular ones spring from a company called Baby Einstein, which is a subsidiary of Disney. When I had my first child, I only heard about the videos from other people. I never considered buying one myself. Something about linking babies' intelligence with TV bothered me.
Yet, doesn't every mother want to believe her baby is gifted? I wondered if this could be the reason why a quarter of American preschoolers own a Baby Einstein video. Everywhere I turned, I encountered Baby Einstein. At every baby store, at my friends' houses, at baby showers. Everyone loved these tapes. That is, everyone but me. So on a whim, I decided to do some research on them to figure out what the fuss was all about.
My first task at hand was to actually watch the videos. The first one I viewed is called Baby Galileo, and it had a bright yellow kangaroo with a telescope in its paw on its cover. Twinkling Stars and Colorful Planets--A Musical Odyssey, the subtitle read. The pamphlet inside the case listed the classical music featured on the tape: Mozart, Chopin, and Tchaikovsky. It also included a few glowing testimonials from parents.
A desert landscape first appeared on the screen, filmed in time-lapsed photography. Every few minutes, a puppet came on and let a helium balloon go up into the air. The images in the video changed about every ten seconds. Classical music played throughout the whole video, but without violins or other symphonic instruments. Instead, it was played on what sounded like a xylophone. It was akin to hearing "Canon In D" on a kazoo. But maybe that was better for babies. I was trying to remain open-minded. Mothering Magazine March-April 2009
The rest of the video showed segments of toddlers playing with stuffed moons, stars and puppets. Then the video explained the solar system with crayon drawings of the planets flashing on the screen. I had a hard time believing babies could actually understand the concept of outer space and planets.
Baby Mozart began with a toy teddy bear playing the drums. The scene quickly changed, and a green snakelike puppet appeared. Then, with "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star" playing on the xylophone in the background, the video showed subsequent pictures of sliced lemons, an apple, alfalfa sprouts, a peach, and then a banana. That's a little weird, I thought. A few seconds later, the snake reappeared. It looked from side to side, and then opened its mouth and said, "BLAH!" Baby Einstein's Language Nursery was created to expose babies to foreign languages. The subhead read, Visual and Multilingual Experiences to Enrich and Entertain Your Baby. It featured pictures of fruit, kids playing with various toys and several foreign language voice-overs. Was Baby Einstein implying that infants could somehow learn foreign languages by video? I picked up the phone to find out.
"Baby Einstein Customer Service, may I help you?" a friendly woman answered.
"I was just wondering if you could tell me a little bit about how Baby Einstein will help my 10-month- old," I said, pen in hand. At that moment I started to get nervous. Briefly ignoring my gut, I panicked. My son Alex was nowhere near uttering his first word and could barely sit up. I knew he was behind in his milestones and I had been privately worrying about his development. I imagined a tall, lanky Alex struggling in high school, trying hard just to make a C average. What if the Language Nursery video would have made a difference? What if I missed the so-called window of opportunity with my son? At that moment, I felt how all parents must feel at one time or another: a fear of failing my child. The flip side of that fear is the fantasy that my child will be wildly successful. My personal favorite scenario involves one of my children giving an acceptance speech. And if it weren't for my mother's undying love and attention to my education, I never could have cured cancer. Mom, this Nobel Peace Prize goes out to you… or something like that.
I came back to reality when the customer service representative cheerfully explained that Baby Einstein's Language Nursery has been shown to improve babies' language development. According to research, she said, babies who heard a foreign language would be better at speaking that language in the future.
"So if my baby watches Language Nursery, he'll be better in, say, a French class in high school?" Again, I pictured a teenage Alex memorizing irregular French verbs in class.
"That's right," she replied. When I asked her for the research information, she said she wasn't sure. But she assured me that there was "some study."
I then asked her which videos were the most popular. She mentioned that Baby Mozart was the best one and then her voice dropped a little. "To tell you the truth," she said, "the Language Nursery video isn't parents' favorite."
This raised all sorts of questions. Why wouldn't the video with the research to back it up be the best seller? If it really worked, wouldn't it be the most popular? And why isn't the research handy for the customer service reps? I wanted to know more. On Baby Einstein's website, the product section featured a brief clip and description of each tape. Although each one had a different focus ranging from pets to counting, they all showed an anonymous hand or babies playing with toys. "Baby Einstein does the playing for you!" my husband quipped after seeing one of the videos. Classical music was added to the tapes due to the "Mozart Effect, " which refers to a 1993 study by researcher Frances Rauscher of the Mothering Magazine March-April 2009
University of Wisconsin. Rauscher asked 36 college students to take a spatial reasoning test after listening to a Mozart sonata. Their scores showed great improvement 15 minutes after listening to the classical music. But no such study has been done on infants, and Dr. Rauscher and her colleagues were horrified when Mozart Effect products entered the market. These products led people "to believe that classical music in general, and Mozart in particular, can improve babies' math scores later in life, improve scores on the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT), and turn average healthy children into Einsteins," Rauscher wrote.
Baby Einstein Company wants parents to believe that every baby can be a genius. All we need is the right video. Baby Einstein knows that babies are naturally curious. Therefore, all of our products are designed to encourage discovery and inspire new ways for parents and little ones to interact, the homepage stated. Baby Einstein offers up parent testimonials to further their claim:
I love to hide around the corner and watch her react to the changing scenes on the television screen--I can always tell when her favorite part is next--she starts bouncing like mad!! Also, thanks to you, I get to take a shower every day, knowing that she is in good company.
We started playing Baby Mozart and Baby Bach videos when our daughter was 5 weeks old. Since then, she has been your biggest fan!! As soon as that Disney logo and jingle starts and the Baby Einstein caterpillar appears, she is hooked. It has given opportunities to tidy around the house - or just a breather...
My 20 mos. old son has adored Baby Mozart, Baby Bach, Baby Newton, and Baby Van Gogh for 5 months now. He lovingly refers to them as his "show." He watches a "show" anywhere from 5 to 10 times a day. He loves to nap to these "shows". Often he will play during his "show"' but sometimes he plops himself down with his blanket and binky and watches.
Even though the company's website states that interaction between a parent (or caregiver) and their little one is the most important element to enjoying [their] products, most of the testimonials reflected parents out of the room while their babies watched the videos. Baby Einstein promises parents guilt-free quiet time while babies are seemingly exposed to educational material.
As a mother of two, there have been countless days when my husband and I feel like popping a bottle of champagne the moment Andie and Alex are asleep for the night. I also know how hard it is to get any sort of work done with two small children underfoot.
Back when I was 8 months pregnant with Alex, my mother and I were washing windows outside. I lamented that 21-month-old Andie was getting in my way whenever I needed to do chores around the house. I wasn't ready to resort to baby videos, but I completely empathized with parents needing their kids out of their hair. Having raised four girls without any educational videos, my mother's response was simple: have them work along with you. I laughed, thinking surely she must have forgotten what it was like with little kids.
"Think of your ancestors," she said to me as she filled up a bucket with soapy water. "What do you think the pioneers did with their children?"
I pondered that for a moment. "The kids did chores right along with them," she said. Could it be that simple? I squeezed out my rag and handed it to little Andie. Once again, my wise mother knew what she was talking about. Andie happily washed windows with us all afternoon without a fuss. Granted, her nice shirt was soaked and stained beyond recognition, but I didn't care. I was just glad to be able to clean my Mothering Magazine March-April 2009 windows. A few weeks later, I tested my mother's theory again. I was trying to get dinner ready and Andie wanted my attention.
"I want to go outside," Andie whined as I opened the refrigerator. It was four-thirty and she'd just finished her afternoon snack of raisins and peanuts. Uh-oh, I thought. I felt a meltdown coming. A minute later, I was rinsing spinach leaves when some water splashed on the floor, catching Andie's eye. "I wanna see!" she shouted. This was her way of asking me to hold her. With my bulging belly and swollen feet, that just wasn't going to happen. But then I thought about the pioneers—those people who managed to raise children just fine without educational videos.
"Sweetie," I said, squatting down to her level. "Would you like to help me make the salad?" Andie nodded as I set the cutting board down on the gray tiles of the kitchen floor. I the bowl of spinach right next to her and started chopping a red pepper. Soon an array of colorful vegetables piled up on the white plastic cutting board like brightly colored blocks.
"Can you put the veggies in the bowl, sweetheart?" Without a sound, Andie dived right in, proudly putting each bit of pepper, carrot and tomato into the salad.
After she finished, Andie clapped her hands and declared, "I'm helping Mommy make a salad!" I was amazed at how her mood could change in a matter of seconds. Of course there was a cost. Some of the carrots rolled underneath the oven in a mess of dust bunnies, and who knows how clean her hands were. But just like her dirty shirt, I didn't care. She suddenly became a person I wanted to be around. It was truly a win-win. I got my work done and she got the interaction she craved.
Don't get me wrong. Simply giving kids chores doesn't answer all parenting problems, and sometimes getting my kids involved in what I'm doing doesn't interest them. But those brief moments of interaction made me rethink how I manage my kids when I need to do housework. I started thinking more about integration instead of isolation when it came to my kids. Besides, if I was going to stick with my ban on television, how else was I going to get anything done?
The reality is that most parents feel guilty if we're not constantly entertaining or educating our children, especially those of us who have left careers to stay at home. We are bombarded with messages of putting our children first, without really knowing what that means. And with the noblest of intentions, we think that the more we do for them, the better. Yet how can parents entertain their kids all day and still effectively run a household? It's impossible to do, which is why Baby Einstein features testimonials of parents showering or getting alone time while their babies watch TV.
But it's not just parents' need for breaks that sells Baby Einstein. It's the pressure we put on ourselves to create the optimum learning environment for our kids, from the minute they are home from the hospital. One desperate parent wrote to Baby Einstein, explaining how much pressure she feels as a mother:
My 2 year old is "gifted" like her father...and I have been struggling with my inability to provide the outlet and stimulation she needs… I've bought workbooks and special toys... At last I was told to get Baby Einstein DVD's and the reaction has been exactly what we've needed. Our daughter cannot get enough... Like this anxious mother, parents are led to believe that we have to get them the right videos so that they can be smart enough to get in the best preschools, elementary schools, and even high schools, and colleges. We are convinced that we will be blamed if our children somehow don't succeed in life. If only we had the right video, the right flash cards, the enriching classical music…the list goes on and on. Mothering Magazine March-April 2009
Julie Aigner-Clark may have felt this same pressure as a mother. She founded Baby Einstein in 1996 because there were "no age-appropriate products available to help her share her love of humanities with her [then-infant] daughter." I wondered how a video featuring a banana, alfalfa sprouts and a balloon shared related to a love of humanities. Yet her videos flew off the shelves in droves.
The Disney Company jumped right in, acquiring Baby Einstein in November of 2001 for an estimated $20 million. According to an article in The New York Post, Baby Einstein's retail revenue has increased from $25 million to $165 million in the last two years.
In an Amazon.com interview, Aigner-Clark mentions her experience as teacher as another inspiration for her infant videos. "If you're trying to teach a bunch of high school students The Tales of King Arthur--I mean, this can be pretty dry," she says. "So you throw in Monty Python and the Holy Grail." Having taught high school English myself, I knew exactly what she was talking about. I was encouraged to show kids the NBC movie, Merlin, instead of reading the actual text. "It's too hard for them to read," more than one seasoned teacher told me. I know that teaching a classroom of sullen 17-year-olds isn't the easiest task, but showing them a movie? Talk about children left behind. I wondered why we have to dumb down the world for babies. Couldn't babies enjoy music, poetry and art without the help of Disney videos?
Along with crediting her experience as a teacher, Aigner-Clark referred to the work of Patricia Kuhl, Ph.D., in discussing Language Nursery, her first video that focuses on foreign language. Kuhl heads the University of Washington's Institute for Learning and Brain Science and co-authored The Scientist In the Crib, a book on infant brain development. In the same Amazon interview, Aigner-Clark mentions Kuhl's research as the reason for making Language Nursery. Kuhl's work showed that babies who hear foreign languages at an early age would learn that language easier later on in life. So Aigner-Clark filmed native foreign language speakers for Language Nursery. This initially made sense to me. I knew parents who hired Spanish-speaking nannies for this very reason.
But Dr. Kuhl's most recent work proves videos ineffective in teaching babies foreign languages. In her July 2003 experiment, Kuhl showed that exposing 10-month-olds to videos and DVDs of native Mandarin Chinese speakers had zero effect on their language development. But if that video is replaced with a living, breathing, person speaking Mandarin, babies showed great learning of that language in a short time period, according to her report. Even though Aigner-Clark had good intentions with her language video, Baby Einstein does not teach babies foreign languages—only live people can do that. And without specifically mentioning the company or its products, Kuhl's research actually debunks Baby Einstein's theory that certain videos could create little "Einsteins." In The Scientist in the Crib, the trend of making babies smarter is referred to as "pseudoscience, " warning parents to be deeply suspicious of any enterprise that offers a formula for making babies smarter or teaching them more, from flash cards to Mozart tapes… these artificial interventions are at best useless and at worst distractions from the normal interaction between grown-ups and babies. (Kuhl, et. al., 201)
In addition, the American Academy of Pediatrics' recommendation of no television for kids under the age of two isn't registering with parents either. The Kaiser Family Foundation's media study reported that nearly half (49%) of all parents consider educational videos "very important to children's intellectual development."
So there's a good reason Aigner-Clark had trouble finding "age-appropriate toys" for her infant daughter back in 1996. Her baby didn't need them. Babies learn from listening to the sounds of a father washing dishes, the doorbell ringing, and even the bright colors during a trip to the grocery store. Mothering Magazine March-April 2009
And as good as a video may sound, the AAP doesn't bother reviewing them because "content is irrelevant," according to AAP spokesperson Susan Buttross, M.D. "There is just no documentation that any video can help babies under two," she adds. The best way for babies to learn is through active participation with their caregivers. "And television is passive participation," she explains. Like Dr. Kuhl, Buttross says babies need their parents to respond to their coos, squeals and babbles. And regardless of what's on the screen, television cannot replace this essential human interaction. Furthermore, babies as young as newborns need opportunities to move around.
"Infants need a lot more tummy time," Buttross says. And if you're looking to buy the best toys for babies, Dr. Buttross says that "good old-fashioned toys like blocks" are all that they really need.
In spite of the facts, Baby Einstein has convinced parents that through television (a one-way medium), babies are actually learning about the world and not simply watching TV alone. 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? And getting thirty minutes of quiet is just icing on the cake. Add to that Parenting Magazine's Best Video of 2001 and the Film Advisory Board's Award of Excellence, and Baby Einstein videos appear to be modern parenting at its best.
My best friend mentioned a conversation she had with a woman who raved about Baby Einstein. "It must be good for babies; it's all in the name!" she said. With titles like Baby Galileo, Baby Shakespeare, and Baby Mozart, we're supposed to think that these videos are good for babies. But just like some nutritionally empty granola bars promising "wholesome goodness," these baby videos may just be entertaining, and not at all educational.
Shortly after I began my research, The Denver Post reported a study linking early television watching with attention problems. According to the original article published in the medical journal Pediatrics, In contrast to the pace in which real life unfolds and is experienced by young children, television can portray rapidly changing images, scenery, and events. It can be overstimulating yet extremely interesting (Christakis et. al, 708).
While Baby Einstein may appear to be helping babies stay more focused, "it doesn't take much of an attention span to stay connected to videos," Dr. Buttross says. So even if babies seem happy, it may not be good for them after all. That makes it easy for parents to mistake entertainment for education. The ubiquity of television in homes may also contribute to Baby Einstein's success. "TV has become like the air we breathe," says Denver pediatrician Rachel Workman, M.D. She remembered a patient needing the television on while she gave birth. "She wanted to watch between pushes," she added. When asked specifically about Baby Einstein tapes, Workman replied, "I just don't think these videos will make babies smarter."
Even though I'll never own a Baby Einstein tape, I'm not sure when I'll ever let my kids watch TV. Right now, they seem to be doing fine without it. What I've learned in the process is that there will always be some company trying to convince me that I need a certain product to be a good mother. When that happens, I'll be sure to listen to my gut, because it is the one voice that I know will always speak the truth.
Anne Anderson Walker lives in Denver with her husband and three young children. She currently teaches writing at Metropolitan State College of Denver.
Mothering Magazine March-April 2009
Sources
Gopnik, Alison, Meltzoff, Andrew, & Kuhl, Patricia (2000). The Scientist in the Crib: What early learning tells us about the mind. New York: HarperCollins.
Gould Keil, Jennifer (August 28, 2004). Kids' Video Wars Rattle Industry. New York Post Online Edition, New York: www.newyorkpost.com.
Liu, Huei-Mei, Kuhl, Patricia, Tsao, Feng-Ming (July 2003). Foreign-language experience in infancy: Effects of short-term exposure and social interaction on phonetic learning. PNAS (Proceedings of the National Academy of the United States of America), www.PNAS.org.
Rauscher, Frances (2002). Improving academic achievement: Impact of Psychological Factors on Education (pp. 269-278). New York: Academic Press.
Rideout, Victoria J., Vandewater, Elizabeth A., Wartella, Ellen A. (2003). Zero to Six, Electronic Media in the Lives of Infants, Toddlers, and Preschoolers. A Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation study, www.kff.org. http://74.125.155.132/search?q=cache:9GKHY6LBXKYJ:www.mothering.com/articles/growing_child/ed ucation/disney-baby- einstein.html+The+%24165+Million+Scam:&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us&client=firefox-a