I think videos like Baby Einstein are closer to child abuse than child development. Babies learn by touching, feeling, interacting and exploring, not by being little couch potatoes. Shame on the companies that foist this crap on parents and shame on the parents that buy into this line of BS.
Agreed. My son is fifteen months old, and he's never watched television. My wife and I read to him, play games with him, and take him outside - we would never park him in front of the idiot box even if some scam artist tried to foist her garbage off as "educational."
I was really angry to see the Baby Einstein founder as W's guest at the State of the Union - sure seemed like he was validating her crap.
“My son is fifteen months old, and he’s never watched television. My wife and I read to him, play games with him, and take him outside”
I did that with my children and I always got compliments on how well they played. They didn’t complain about not having anything to do or being bored. They had the imagination to make everything into something fun. They are teenagers now and sometimes drive me nuts with their antics. ;-)
From what I've read the founder of Baby Einstein sold the company to Disney then she started working with the creator of America's Most Wanted on a series of videos aimed at keeping teens safe. It was the teen videos that got her honored by Bush, not the baby ones.