MY GRADE: 
There seems to be a split in the world of parenting…
Back when I was growing up, most parents did stuff pretty much the same things: you fed your kid, you changed their diaper, you let them go down the street to play with the neighbor kids, you made sure they did their homework, you told then not to run into traffic. Occasionally a kid lost a finger playing with firecrackers, but hey, with that sort of intelligence it’s safe to assume they weren’t going to become a world renown brain surgeon anyway.
Some kids took an interest in learning and became the smart kids. Others were more drawn to shooting squirrels with BB guns. They became bullies, and later in life, investment bankers. There was one fat kid who was picked on. And another fat kid who was so huge and angry and powerful that he could handle himself. One kid had corrective shoes and kinda limped but somehow he compensated and was ironically he was the best one at kickball.
Nowadays, parents have split off into two camps: Well-meaning but overbearing parents and parents who don’t do crap and should just escort their kids to the nearest juvenile detention center.
Right now I’d like to direct my attention to the well-meaning, overbearing ones. Because you are being suckered. By who? Well, kind of by Sigmund Freud. Or at very least, the hazy concept that Freud put in our modern heads that we adults are just the sum of our childhood experiences. Like, really early childhood experiences. Like Zygote early. As in, you must read to the child in the womb, and teach him Spanish in the delivery room, and bring the music teacher to the hospital nursery to get them started on piano lessons. There is no time to waste, because your kid is just aching to become a dead-beat loser and you must put a stop to this as early and often as possible.
Then, to add to our collective parenting guilt, years later (the 1980′s I believe) there was some study done by a scientist selling a book (surprise, surprise) that suggested that playing Mozart for a baby still in the womb helps with brain development. (Heck, it seemed to do wonders for Falco)
Next came Baby Einstein, a multi-billion dollar industry based on the notion that tiny children need to watch bad puppetry and stock footage of animals in order to become successful doctors later in life. Never mind that pediatricians recommend that children not watch any television before the age of two. For the exhausted, guilt-ridden parent discovering there’s such a miracle toy as Baby Einstein is like striking the mother lode. Now you can just plop your infant down in front of the plasma screen, pop in a Baby Einstein DVD and rest easily, knowing your child is well on their way to a Harvard MBA.
Only one problem. Baby Einstein does nothing. Well, that’s not entirely true. It could be responsible for delaying language development in toddlers. So there’s a purpose, I guess. If you’d like your kid to shut up for a few extra months, keep playing that DVD. But for the rest of us, this Baby Einstein lawsuit just proves what most of us already knew: if it sounds too good to be true it probably is. (This adage also applies to The Hollywood Cookie Diet, The Sham Wow, and to a certain extent, Barack Obama.)
Sorry to say it, fellow parents. You’re gonna have to play with your kids.
Now don’t fret. I leave you with this optimistic thought: Albert Einstein himself didn’t have Baby Einstein. Matter of fact, I’m guessing all he had was a ball of yarn and a pine cone to play with as a child. Yet someone he seemed to turn out alright. So what did Einstein’s parents do to raise such a genius? I’m guessing the most effective thing they did for their little frizzy haired bundle was give him lots of love (if perhaps not enough haircuts), encourage his interests, and steer him away from traffic. Just like our parents did for us.
By the way, for those of you bought a Baby Einstein video, if your kid seems particularly stupid and you’re pissed off about it, feel free to apply for a refund (for the video, not the kid).
great- baby’s need love and play, not an educational program in order to become millioners (it doesn’t acctually matter if they become smart- important is to make money
Delay language development you say? Could it be used to delay specific language such as “I want” and “no?”
Blogger Dad, sounds like a brilliant idea for a new DVD. You should work on that. Of course, if you didnt grow up with Baby Einstein you’re probably not smart enough to pull it off. Oh, the irony!
wait, what!! you mean parents shouldn’t base their parenting on the way clones are raised in science-fiction?
obviously the real problem isn’t with those einstein-dvd’s as such but with parents putting in a dvd INSTEAD of actually communicating with their kid. and i think those parents fall in the “pretending to be a ‘taking care of it’s child’-parents, while actually being a ‘couldn’t give 2 cents’-parents”, who won’t have to bother saving for an education-fund for their kids.