Because my baby is the cutest!
Archive for November, 2009
Lullaby for your pre-born! : P
Nov 10th
Hey, you want to start annoying your kids with your crummy taste in tunes before they’ve even been born? Fine, go for it. The Lullabelly prenatal music belt — which is like a giant, soft cummerbund with a speaker stuffed into it — is here to help. Just plug your fave PMP into it and you’ll be all set to turn the womb into a super musical fun fest. The speaker has an output of about 60 to 80 decibels, and you can jack in with your earbuds to jam along. Just remember: you’re the one with the volume control, and no matter how good the Tran-Siberian Orchestra sounds to you at 11 am, some people would rather listen to Megadeth. This bad boy comes in two slightly different packages, one which will run you $49.99, the other is $59.99
Baby Einstein.. not really
Nov 10th
The Disney Company, makers and distributors of Baby Einsteinproducts are apparently offering a full refund of $15.99 to anyone who purchased a Baby Einstein DVD between June 5, 2004 and Sept. 4, 2009.
Why? Because apparently while these videos were marketed as “educational,” they do little to educate. And, apparently, they weren’t just ineffective, they may, in fact, have been DETRIMENTAL.
This assessment is based upon a study which linked kids who were exposed to Baby Einstein videos to lower scores on tests that measured standard language development. Thus striking a blow to neurotic parents everywhere who’d put their kids on a regimen of watching these videos as a first step on the road to Mensa.
On the one hand I believe it. Because, personally, I STILL, almost a decade later, can’t get those songs out of my head. And I’m sure that would be distracting to anyone trying to take any kind of test. But on the other hand – how sad!
The Baby Einstein videos were, in their heyday, the pinnacle of doing something good for your kid–while not having to make any effort. You were grooming the next Nobel Prize-winning astrophysicist while they were sitting there drooling, swaddled in their own excrement.
Now these videos have been thrown atop the heap along with things like lead-based paint, heavy metal music, and playing in old refrigerators left out for the trash with the door left on.
But let’s be serious, did we REALLY think we were conditioning our kids for brilliance by watching a puppet stick its tonge out to the tune of light classical piano? Or were we just psyched that we could get stuff done for 45 minutes while the kid was otherwise amused?
I think it should be sort of obvious to any parent that sitting in front of a TV, not talking, not listening to someone else talking is going to do more harm than good to any child’s language development. Of course real human interaction is better for them. You’d have to watch an awful lot of harmful kids videos not to recognize that.
