Baby Einstein, Sesame Street and Baby Education
Sunday, September 16, 2007
In the last few years educational videos, games and books like Baby Einstein, Little Einstein and Dora the Explorer have become parental favorites. Yes Sesame Street still has a huge audience, the the focus on learning everything from classical composers to sign language seems to have taken the top spot with children & babies as young as 2 months old.
Since the 80's there has been an upsurge in the desire to educate our children on a wide variety of topics at earlier stages in their life. On the outset this doesn't seem like such a bad thing. And in fact, if educational stimulation is balanced with all the rest of what life should be offering to children then it can be quite beneficial.
The problems come when a child or baby is watching hours of television and or DVD's per day. The latest research has shown that after about 30 minutes of audio-visual stimulation the child's capacity for learning drops significantly and a dependence on visual stimulation sets in. So instead of creating super genius kids we are creating immobile, couch potatoes who's brains have been numbed. The child's capacity for creative, imaginative play is greatly stunted and their ability to think for themselves is markedly altered.
The real casualty of allowing children to watch more than about 30- 60 minutes of television/video per day lies in what the child is missing out on rather than what they are becoming addicted to. Studies show that these children are less able to deal with social situations, specifically social interactions with family, friends and others they encounter throughout their day.
Their ability to use mental functions such as abstract thinking becomes impaired and they are less likely to learn and develop talents and other interests such as reading for pleasure or playing a musical instrument.
So once again the research has shown that less is more and that too much of a good thing can have very negative effects on your child's future.
Since the 80's there has been an upsurge in the desire to educate our children on a wide variety of topics at earlier stages in their life. On the outset this doesn't seem like such a bad thing. And in fact, if educational stimulation is balanced with all the rest of what life should be offering to children then it can be quite beneficial.
The problems come when a child or baby is watching hours of television and or DVD's per day. The latest research has shown that after about 30 minutes of audio-visual stimulation the child's capacity for learning drops significantly and a dependence on visual stimulation sets in. So instead of creating super genius kids we are creating immobile, couch potatoes who's brains have been numbed. The child's capacity for creative, imaginative play is greatly stunted and their ability to think for themselves is markedly altered.
The real casualty of allowing children to watch more than about 30- 60 minutes of television/video per day lies in what the child is missing out on rather than what they are becoming addicted to. Studies show that these children are less able to deal with social situations, specifically social interactions with family, friends and others they encounter throughout their day.
Their ability to use mental functions such as abstract thinking becomes impaired and they are less likely to learn and develop talents and other interests such as reading for pleasure or playing a musical instrument.
So once again the research has shown that less is more and that too much of a good thing can have very negative effects on your child's future.