Hi
my son really enjoys baby Einstein.He learnt signs and colors and he really enjoys the puppets.pls share ur experience with us.We can download from you you tube.
I personally think Baby Einstein (BE) has got a lot of unnecessary and unfair bad press lately. Their only mistake I think was to say that their products raise a baby’s IQ and there were a lot of parents who simply plonked their babies infront of the TV and used BE as a glorified baby sitter and then complained that their babies didnt become geniuses.
But, I have a few observation on BE from my experience which is why I think that all the hoopla is over hyped:
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Some of the books are really good. When I first saw them I thought they were a bit complicated especially given that on the cover they said ‘from 6 months upwards’ and then in the text proceeded to say things like "Gorillas are the largest animals in a group called primates’. BUT…I was wrong. My daughter LOVED the colourful pictures and the photographs and I found that the BE books were a great investment because they remain interesting to the child until they are about 4 or 5 years old. In the beginning you can discuss pictures with them and my daughter learned a lot of vocabulary just from me pointing things out in the pictures. Now that she is 2, she likes to hear the text as opposed to just talking about the pictures.
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Regarding the DVD’s. I personally was a bit disappointed with some of them but my daughter seemed to like a couple of them and the one about numbers reinforced number recognition for her. There are some better DVD’s out there like Brainy Baby which does a ‘right brain’ flashcard segment for the alphabet.
Unlike a lot of other people, I dont think watching TV in moderation is bad because I feel if you ban it altogether, the child becomes obsessed with it so you can use TV to your advantage as an educational tool - like a digital board book. They can see how monkeys and tigers move etc.
Also, I think it’s worth bearing in mind that before BE, the available products for toddlers out there were either non-existent or not that great. So I think people should take it easy re Baby Einstein. It wont make your baby a genius but if used in moderation (like anything else) it wont harm either. Some studies say that watching BE or other DVDs reduces a child’s vocab by 6 words and can actually lower their IQ. I think this only applies to parents who use TV as a baby sitter and have little interaction with them. My daughter is a motor-mouth with a very impressive vocabulary - she started talking at 9 months. So I dont think BE did her any harm at all, in fact, some of the books even did her some good as did the DVD on numbers/counting. The seasons one also helped bcs it is hard to explain to a toddler what seasons are especially when you live in a country that has one season all year round (summer!).
I hope this helped.
xxxxxx
We never really got into Baby Einstein over here, but most kids were watching Barney, or worse Spongebob, before this series came out. So I agree that it probably is getting bad press. I have a few packs of flashcards that are very worthwhile, however the board books aren’t as direct about the concepts as others I’ve found. I would like to see some videos out there that actually show parents how to work with their children, because obviously as a culture we are losing our touch and new parents don’t understand about repetition, routine, etc. I go to people’s homes, and they have every Teletubbies, Barney, Blues Clues, and The Wiggles. Not sure why Baby Einstein offends people so much.
Celeste,
I think you make an excellent point about moderation. I know of parents that don’t allow TV or sugar and their children seem to want to binge on it when they get a chance.
Let’s face it Baby Einstein is a fabulous name. Without even making a claim people believe they are buying products that stimulate their babies intellect. I like the BE dvds because they are well made and entertaining. Some have more educational content than others. I would allow my children to watch them more for entertainment purposes because they enjoyed them allowing me to get things done. Because I talk to my children all the time it did not have any negative effects on them. Everyone wants to be entertained from time to time and the BE DVDs are great for that. We used the YBCR with one of my children and he would watch them but they were never a favorite video and definitely not something he wanted to watch again and again. When we developed our Monki See DVDs our aim was and is to make learning fun so that the babies want to watch them again and again. The Monki See DVDs are filled with written and spoken language and we included the fun aspects such as puppets, music and poetry. Our customers tell us that their babies love them, so hopefully we have succeeded there.
Learning should be fun. That is the whole point to what we do with our babies. If it is not fun there is no interest. It doesn’t matter how educational something is, if there is no fun factor it is worthless. I think that BE could have made their products much more educational and still kept the entertainment.
My kids love BE. I just have one but they like it. I have sign language one. Can anyone suggests any other BE DVD that their kids love? May be I can buy one for xmas gift.
My son loved the one that teaches shapes. I think it is called Baby Newton. It was actually one of the more educational DVDs.