Minors over miners?
August 8, 2007

Yesterday's L.A. Times placed the story about six miners trapped in a Utah cave-in well-inside the front section (actually, on A8),  while page 1 carried a brief, odd story no more than 8 inches long, headlined "Videos as a baby brain drain."

The news, from a study by the University of Washington in Seattle, was that for every hour a day that babies 8 to 16 months old viewed popular videos such as Brainy  Baby or Baby Einstein, they knew six to eight fewer words than other children.

Why didn't someone tell my (video-watching and highly articulate) kids before they conversed their dad and me to distraction?

Now, I will no more endorse using DVDs as a babysitter than I will feel guilty for sometimes letting my kids watch them--even before they were 2 years old (in violation of American Academy of Pediatrics recommendations).

My point is simply that these stories--and many studies--can't don't begin to take into account all the factors that go into vocabulary development, including genetics, home environment (outside of TV viewing), and how--and how much--parents talk to their children. 

No thinking parent really thinks they are going to make their baby smarter just by plopping him or her in front of the right videos--at least none that I know. A professor involved with the study noted in the Times that children whose parents read to them or told them stories had larger vocabularies. Who woulda guessed?

'Educational videos make for dumb kids' is just too easy a headline, and it paints with way too broad a brush.

Posted by Marcy Magiera on August 8, 2007 | Comments (0)