Last Friday the New York Times reported on one of the strangest refunds in recent consumer protection history: the Baby Einstein Company, owned for several years now by Disney, will refund up to four DVDs per household, based on the fact that research shows that not only do the movies not benefit children but that watching any television of any type can be damaging for children under three. The refund is the closest thing we're likely to see to an admission from the industry that the product is dangerous. The decision came under the threat of a class action lawsuit prompted by the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood, one of my permanent links in my blog roll.
Of course there are lots of parents out there who think that television is innocuous for kids under three. Remarkably people in the children's television industry, because they care so passionately about benefitting children, are some of the most cautious when it comes to screening things for their own kids. I'm much more discerning concerning quality than I was a few years ago before wading into this industry. And the consensus for infants is generally that it is completely detrimental. I believe that when Loretta was a baby we checked a Baby Einstein out of the library and I watched it more than she did, and we took it back and never felt we'd missed out on anything. Now with Isabelle (six weeks) we're simply going to adhere strictly to the no-television-before-2 1/2 rule. Spending time with kids at this age is so much more important than any visual media, no matter how good. And if you're really thirsting for something enriching, actual music, art, and poetry, besides the plethora of brilliant board books out there, are all readily available.
There's been a lot of online commentary on this "recall," but let me recommend Dade Hayes' book Anytime Playdate, which includes a lot of thought about media for kids this young and an extensive interview with the Baby Einstein's creator Julie-Aigner Clark. In fact, while I'm on the subject, rather than rag on Baby Einstein unfairly, because I think Clark's original intentions were good, let me include a forty-five minute video of an interview with Hayes introduced by David Kleeman of the Center for Children and Media (both of whom I met at Little Airplane last summer) from last year when the book was new. I haven't seen it all because of the length, but it looks good. Watch it here or on a larger screen on YouTube. With a lot of ranting going on out there right now it can be the kind of thing to put the Baby Einstein phenomenon in a rational perspective.
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