Rants, Musings, and Mental Meanderings of a former Conservative Christian Mother. Standing Strong against ignorance, preconceptions, labels and excessive housework. Celebrating original thought, religious freedom, parenthood, free enterprise and chocolate.

Wednesday, August 8, 2007

Baby Genius? Think again!

It seemed to become quite the craze - all those DVDs that promised to turn your child into a genius. Just plug them in, and get on with your life! Now, any mom with a brain knows there is never any substitute for good, old-fashioned one-on-one interaction with your baby... but now there is a study that says children who are plugged in at an early age actually have smaller vocabularies. I am sure more and more research is out there and will soon prove just how detrimental television is to very young minds. Hey, I'm the first to say it's nice to have a break now and then, but let's not let it progress to where our children spend the majority of their day drooling in front of a screen with that vacant "TV stare" on their face.

Click here for the story:
DVDs don't produce Brainy Babies

4 comments:

JBBGirl said...

HA HA HA! DO you remember when we were little and Jimmy would be watching TV at Nana's house...TOO FUNNY! He looked like he was in a trance. Nana would call him and he would still be wide eyed with his tongue hanging partly out and his mouth half open. I know your post was serious and I agree but I couldn't help but laugh thinking of poor little Jimmy!

Angela said...

Okay, now I don't feel so bad - I had the same reaction!!!! I pictured Jimmy's face when I wrote that. My brother also did the same thing at my grandma's house. Mom would get so irritated she would say, "That's it, I'm unplugging your life support!" and turn off the TV. He would sit for a couple seconds all confused, then finally snap out of the TV trance.

Melanie said...

I think these videos are getting a bad "rep" because of flaws on the part of the parents, not their videos!!

The videos say right on them and the newer ones before the video say that the videos are a learning TOOL for you to sit down WITH your children and interact with the video!!

If you choose to PLUG your 6mo into the tv thats your fault, don't blame the videos that clearly state they're not for that purpose!!

Angela said...

I agree with you, but to me the article didn't really seem to be attacking the DVDs themselves. It more seemed to address parents that wanted to fast-track their kids intelligence by parking them in front of these DVDs instead of personally interacting with them.