Rating: - Life Saver
This product was recommended to me by my cousin. It has been well worth the $15-and then some. My son loves it-and has loved it since he was 3 months old. He's now 11 months and will still sit & watch it. I actually enjoy watching it myself-it's very intriguing. The music is wonderful-so peppy and spirited. This is our favorite Baby Einstein dvd. I have purchased several as shower gifts for new mom's. Love it!
Rating: - Great video
I got this video for my daughter when she was 6 months old. She watched it a little then, but now that she is older (11 months) she really loves to watch it.
Rating: - No Einstein's here
After swearing that I would adhere to the pediatrician's recommendation to keep my son away from the TV until he was two, I broke down and ordered the oh-so touted Baby Einstein DVD for my 4 month old. After all, I needed time to do things around the house and my son is not a napper.
Well, after 5 minutes of watching the video with my son, I was horribly motion sick and he was completely uninterested. I mean he literally glanced at it 2 or 3 times and promptly looked away. And why wouldn't he? The video is stupid--bad closeups of cheap crap that someone decided would hold the attention of a baby? Backrounded by horrible renditions of classical music classics.
Do yourself a favor, buy a REAL Mozart CD, put it on and click on the Weather Channel. The moving maps and quick graphics hold my son's attention, and show him the states and cities on top of that. He might acutally learn something in that hour rather than be "entertained" by really bad graphics and cheap objects on a black screen.
Rating: - baby loves it!
My baby loves this video. I've even caught my husband, as well as my 8-year-old daughter peering over her book watching this video.
Rating: - Pediatric Warning
Your child would love watching this video, but she'd also love eating cotton candy and drinking grape soda. Many pediatric and psychological studies have shown that young children know FEWER words for every hour they spend watching videos like this one. Why? Because they aren't spending time with YOU, practicing their language and social skills. There's also evidence that young children who watch TV have a greater risk of developing ADHD. Last, toddlers who grow up in homes with the TV always on in the background literally seem to have more trouble hearing themselves think. This hurts their developing linguistic abilities and consequently their abilities to engage silent reasoning.
Please protect your child -- don't let her watch any TV during her early, crucial, developmental years. We only watch TV when our little girl is asleep.
Update: France just banned TV programming directed at infants.
From the Associated Press:
updated 3:35 p.m. ET, Wed., Aug. 20, 2008
PARIS - France's broadcast authority has banned French channels from airing TV shows aimed at children under 3 years old, to shield them from developmental risks it says television viewing poses at that age.
The High Audiovisual Council, in a ruling published Wednesday, said it wanted to "protect children under 3 from the effects of television."
France's minister for culture and communication, Christine Albanel, issued a "cry of alarm" to parents in June about channels dedicated 24 hours a day to baby-targeted programming. In a newspaper interview, she called them "a danger" and urged parents not to use them to help their children get to sleep.
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She was referring to two foreign channels that can be seen in France on cable television, BabyFirstTV and Baby TV.
The council's ruling aims to prevent the development of such programming on French channels. It also orders French cable operators that air foreign channels with programs for babies to broadcast warning messages to parents. The messages will read: "Watching television can slow the development of children under 3, even when it involves channels aimed specifically at them."
The ruling cites health experts as saying that interaction with other people is crucial to early child development.
"Television viewing hurts the development of children under 3 years old and poses a certain number of risks, encouraging passivity, slow language acquisition, over-excitedness, troubles with sleep and concentration as well as dependence on screens," the ruling said.
- Life Saver
- No Einstein's here