The huge baby video industry was shaken last week by news of a study questioning the videos’ effectiveness. This shouldn’t come as a surprise. Did anyone really believe that watching a Baby Mozart video would produce a musical prodigy?

But clearly millions of parents do believe there’s some benefit in allowing an infant to be propped up in front of a screen watching one of the hundreds of baby videos that are available at Garden State Plaza or Babies R Us or on Amazon.com.

Some of the titles would be almost laughable if they weren’t taken so seriously by well-meaning parents hoping to give their baby every possible advantage. The Baby Einstein series includes Baby Monet, Baby Galileo, Baby Bach, Baby Van Gogh and, yes, Baby Wordsworth and Baby Shakespeare.

It gets worse. The Brainy Baby series includes Right Brain, Left Brain, Spanish and French. I found one video that promises “Your Baby Can Read.” There’s a Baby Genius series and even Sporty Baby: Golf, which introduces your child to the world of golf…

At that point, these videos have gone from brain stimulators to baby sitters. Maybe that wouldn’t be so bad if we were in fact creating a new generation of artists, poets, scientists and composers. What we may be creating instead is simply the next generation of kids addicted to screens — and all the electronic products their parents can buy.

The University of Washington study released last week concluded that passively watching a baby video on a regular basis does nothing to promote brain development. The researchers said there’s no proof babies exposed to these videos are any smarter or have bigger vocabularies. There’s some evidence to indicate they may lag in language development — because of less time interacting with humans…

That’s why the American Academy of Pediatrics has been saying for years that children under age 2 shouldn’t be watching any screens at all. They should be interacting with other human beings: mothers, fathers, siblings, grandparents, sitters. All those people interact with the baby one-on-one, talking, smiling, gesturing, cuddling and, equally important, responding to what the baby does. A screen can’t respond. No matter how cute the baby’s smile or how frustrated her cries, the screen is impassive. Sooner or later, the baby figures that out…

Finally, don’t forget the value of books. Whenever possible, read to your child. For stimulation, enrichment, vocabulary, bonding and just plain joy, nothing beats reading. It’s never too early to start and never too late to continue. Reach for a book, not a DVD. There’s no video that will ever compare with a comfortable chair, a good book and a baby on your lap…

Source: NorthJersey.com
http://tinyurl.com/ywquxc