Parents tricked by Baby Einstein

According to a study recently published in the Journal of Pediatrics, the latest crop of baby educational videos, like Baby Einstein and Brainy Baby, not only don’t help kids learn but actually slow their learning. Every hour spent watching TV or videos — of any kind, even education ones — resulted in the babies (aged 8-16 months) understanding an average of 6-8 words less than non-video-watching babies. Beyond that age, the videos didn’t seem to hurt, but didn’t help either.

Reading to the kids or telling them stories, on the other hand, did help.

. . .

I’ve been meaning to start adding some parenting resources to this site, now that (as those of you who know me in person know) my wife and I have a baby. They’ll probably go in the Calyx section since that has the most connection to relationships and that sort of thing. Kind of ironic that stuff pertaining to kids ends up in the only section with an age warning, though. Maybe I need to rethink the site’s structure a little…