Ten Reasons Why You Should Not Buy Any Baby Einstein DVD’s
It seems to be one of the most popular items right now. But do baby Einstein video tapes really teach your child anything? Or is it just an expensive waste of money? The following is a list of reasons why you should not invest any of your money into the Baby Einstein DVD”S.
1. First of all it will not hold your baby’s attention. Unlike Sesame Street and other educational programs that can hold a child’s attention for more than five minutes “Baby Einstein has failed in this task. There is however some children who have found it interesting and will watch it through its entirety, but many parents feel that these children are doing this because they are slowly becoming addicted to the television.
2. The price is way too high. During my research of this product I have found it to be one of the most expensive educational DVD’s on the market. You end up paying about double what other DVD’s cost. The problem is that I do not feel that you are really getting what you pay for. The fact that it has various languages on it does not mean that your child will be able to speak all of these languages just from watching a DVD forty times a day.
3. Instead of speeding up the learning process you may be slowing it down.
I found that the Baby Einstein collection relays information to children in a very confusing way. So instead of learning anything of importance they only seem to pick up a song or two, which is probably why it does not hold their attention span for too long.
4. The images do not seem to match what they are talking about. At certain points in the DVD’s it seems like they have just thrown any general image into the background in an attempt to keep your child interested why they verbally feed information to them. Other shows and educational programs have proven over and over again that a child learns better when there is a connection between the object shown and the verbal communication. If there is no relation it may cause your child to become very confused.
5. Some of the DVD’s make no sense. I have taken the time to watch several of the DVD’s such as the Baby Bach video which is supposed to teach them about music I would assume, and they just don’t make sense. They flash from scene to scene playing music and showing a few instruments and object but what exactly is my child learning about?
6. Parents tend to use it as a baby sitter. It seems that instead of actually taking the time to teach or educate your child yourself, many parents choose to use the Baby Einstein DVD’s to hold their child’s attention while they complete other projects around the house. Of course there is nothing wrong with this, except for the fact that your child is not learning anything but how to become a couch potato. The only time that most children seem to react to anything on the videos is when music is played. This is completely normal since most young babies love music. The sad part is that parents fail to realize that the music is the only thing they are picking up from these DVD’s. At least that was the case with my children and several other children of friends.
7. It slows down communication between child and parent. I have observed some of my friend’s children who sit for hours watching these video’s and have noticed that the more they watch the less they attempt to communicate. This has been the case with more than one child; they almost seem to not understand or want to reply to anything if it is not on a television screen.
8. It gives children a false sense of reality. The images that are shown, and the way that they are set up, almost seem to give children a false sense of reality. They may learn a new song or possibly some colors, but the way they portray the real world to children is opposite reality. They grow up in a world of fantasy with these DVD’s instead of really learning what the outside world is like. When compared with other DVD’s such as leapfrog the focus of the DVD’s are not really on what your child will need to know when it is time to start preschool. Like stated earlier is really just seems to be a baby sitter.
9. A complaint has been filed with the federal trade commission. A group called the campaign for a commercial free childhood, which is a non profit organization, of health care officials, concerned parents, and teachers, has filed a complaint against Baby Einstein. They accuse them of violating section 5 of the FTC Act, by making false claims that their videos are educational, and can benefit infants. To read the entire complaint that has been filed you can visit www.commercialfreechildhood.org for additional information.
10.Several Baby Einstein DVD’s had incorrect information. If you have actually taken to the time to sing along with some of the Baby Einstein DVD’s you may have noticed that some of the information they teach your children is incorrect. For example on one of the DVD’s the song where they sing the alphabet is incorrect. But you would only know this if you sang the song along with your child. I also noticed that on quite a few of the DVD’s words are said incorrectly when they are stated in a different language. When the Baby Einstein Company was contacted they said that it was just a glitch in the DVD, but many parents have said that after having one or two replaced the problems were still there.
So the bottom line is that even if your child does learn something from these DVD’s it may end up being incorrect information.
