Science in Seconds - Baby Einstein
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Science in Seconds
Know Everything
RANTS - Baby Einstein
Brit Trogen: Children. They're our future, our hope, our reason for being.
So why wouldn't we give them a helping hand early in life
using untested technologies targeted at their fragile baby brains?
Starting in the late '90s, the boom of smart-baby products
flooded the market, often with little to no scientific testing:
Baby Einstein, the Preemie Baby Company, BabyPlus,
and of course, everyone's favorite, in utero headphones.
All made incredible claims about the effects their products
could have on a child's intellectual development.
But studies have now shown that exposure to these baby-oriented media
could do more harm than good. A University of Washington study revealed
that DVDs and videos, like Baby Einstein,
are strongly correlated with lower scores on language development tests
in children between eight and sixteen months of age.
Every hour per day a baby watches them shaves six to eight words
off their vocabulary. Oh, Einstein! How they tarnish your name.
But this didn't come as a big surprise.
The American Academy of Pediatrics has always recommended
that children under two watch no television at all,
no matter how blissfully quiet it might make them.
So how do you make your kids smarter? Well, book reading and storytelling
are correlated with increased test scores.
Or, in other words, actually spending time with your kid.
Courtesy of Science in Seconds – All rights reserved
Only for educational/non-profit purposes.
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