I think there should be no father or mother in the western world who does not know the line of DVDs, books and articles of "The Baby Einstein Company", which is supposed to stimulate the intelligence of children with moving images and classical background music .
As Lola explained to us now two years ago, all these products are an impressive marketing strategy that have achieved the expected result. In an increasingly competitive world, parents try to do with their children what helps them be more intelligent, and if the results come up spending little money and turning on the television, better than better.
They do not bring any benefits
It was shown then that the children who watched these videos showed no benefit no significant differences in their development with respect to children who did not see them and now Walt Disney Company comes to endorse this by announcing that will return the money, in the US, to those parents who have purchased products Baby einstein in the last five years. This measure has come thanks to the efforts of the CCFC (Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood), which has been struggling for years to prevent children from being the center of attention for deceptive advertising campaigns.
The CCFC has shown that while television could be a good educational resource for older children, there is no evidence that there are cognitive benefits if those in front of the screen are children under two years of age and studies show that Babies who have seen Baby Einstein videos have no more communication skills than those who have not.
The AAP recommends avoiding TV in children under 2 years old
The marketing campaign for these products, on the other hand, has been tremendously effective. 48% of the US population believes that these types of baby videos are beneficial for the child's development and only 6% know that the AAP (American Academy of Pediatrics) recommends that children under 2 years of age not watch television.
One of the concerns in this regard is that all the time children spend on television "stimulating" is time they are not sharing with their parents, surely much more beneficial time.
Einstein once said: “If you want your child to be intelligent, tell him stories; If you want him to be smarter, tell him more stories. ” Words, communication, dialogue and verbal and nonverbal communication help children understand and think. Repeated images, music and concrete words could help to memorize, but not to think and The important thing in life is knowing how to think, not knowing how to repeat what has been learned.
In my case, I will continue putting my Baby Einstein videos in the car, because it is the only way for Aran, the little one, to sit and tied. I know that they do not stimulate their intelligence, but I also know that they are not going to atrophy their brains.
