Thanks for that. That was a very interesting read. Brent Logan himself replied too. I’m not sure about the truth of some of the accusations, but these are my comments on this and in general:
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Is BabyPlus “unnatural”? Well, this is the same argument said about babies being taught to read. Many people say it’s unnatural, and we shouldn’t do it. Why? “They’re too young to learn!”, or “You just don’t teach babies at this age!” etc etc. If you look at our brillkids.com home page, we even have a big NOTE entitled “Is Teaching Babies Unnatural?” precisely because of such feelings by some people.
I’m sure some people also probably said that the first sound recordings were “unnatural” too when it first came out on the radio. Personally, I don’t find babyplus sounds unnatural. 
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Similarly, there is (and probably will be for a long time) a big portion of people who will ‘instinctively’ be opposed to these things. First, we have that misconception that babies cannot learn, you have to force them to learn, etc., as mentioned above and detailed on brillbaby.com. Secondly, the natural assumption for these people is that therefore all these companies out there doing products to teach babies etc. are just con-artists taking advantage or poor innocent and gullible mothers. We (BrillKids) probably also face people who have this assumption too, and I don’t think this will go away anytime soon.
Mind you, I’m sure that there ARE people who do ‘take advantage’ of parents’ love for their children and try to sell them products which don’t work or are lousy. But does that mean that all products out there are worthless?
For prenatal education, it is even more open to this assumption, because it’s much harder to prove and see results in fetuses before they are even born. (At least with early learning we can actually see babies learning many things.) But just because it’s hard to prove prenatal stimulation scientifically, does it mean that it’s all untrue and there is no benefit at all?
So, the way I look at it is this. Does it harm the baby? I find it very hard to see how it would. Does it work? Actually, the question should be, does it make any positive difference? Well, who knows. Maybe it does, maybe it doesn’t. Maybe it helps some more than it does others. So the ultimate question for me would be, can I afford it? If so, I would buy it. If not, I’d save my money for other things.
But in any event, don’t expect Babyplus to do all the work for you! At most it is something that will help. If you don’t take care of your mood, your diet, etc., then all may count for nothing. and also, make sure you also do all those other things in conjunction with babyplus, like singing and talking to the baby, touching/feeling/massaging it, playing music, etc. etc. On this point, does singing etc. help? Who knows? Maybe it does, maybe it doesn’t. Is it scientifically proven to help? Maybe it is. But what about the time when it had not yet been proven. Does it mean that it didn’t work then? Which is why I say, If it’s not too much trouble or cost too much, then I would do it (assuming I’m confident it is safe)!
As for the fact that Einstein never had babyplus, you know, there’s a book called “Einstein never used flash cards”. It is a book condemning early learning, based on all those (false) assumptions about early learning. But anyway, this is actually the “Nature vs Nurture” debate - how much is nature, how much is nurture? Personally, I believe it’s about 50/50. If Einstein had prenatal stimulation and early learning, maybe he’d be EVEN more brilliant? Who knows?
Anyway, just my 2 cents’ worth. This is a very interesting conversation!
