The Genius of ‘Baby Einstein’

education2008

纽约时报的一篇评论，先放这，有时间再翻译。

Op-Ed Contributor
The Genius of ‘Baby Einstein’ By LISA GUERNSEY
Published: August 16, 2007
Alexandria, Va.
I know I shouldn’t admit to playing baby videos for my children, but allow me to embarrass myself. “Baby Mozart” was part of my first child’s life when she was all of 3 months old. She was a colicky baby, despite my hours of walking her, nursing her and singing to her. The video didn’t always work — and the calm never lasted much longer than 15 minutes — but I was desperate.
Back then, in 2002, there was no research on whether these videos lived up to their billing of being good for babies’ cognitive development. But now a survey by researchers at the University of Washington, just published in The Journal of Pediatrics, has found that for every hour of baby-video viewing per day, children ages 8 to 16 months knew six to eight fewer words than those who watched no videos.
The report conjured images of 8-month-olds strapped into bouncy chairs, forced to watch an endless loop of video flashcards while listening to the tinkling of classical piano.
It’s not a pretty picture, but it’s not the whole picture either, thankfully. Videos are indeed being shown in many households with young children. And yes, some parents mistakenly believe that the videos are going to ratchet up their children’s I.Q. But watching hours and hours of baby videos is not the norm.
Only 17 percent of 384 babies in the survey were put in front of videos for an hour or more each day. The average baby watched only about 9 minutes a day. Data from the Kaiser Family Foundation suggests that the national average may be a bit higher — about 13 minutes a day. And babies’ total screen time, including television, DVDs and even computers, according to Kaiser, is higher still — about 49 minutes per day. But the alarming finding from the University of Washington survey applied only to baby videos. Television time, in contrast, seemed to have no effect, good or bad, on babies this young.
Meanwhile, today’s babies also spend nearly an hour a day playing outside, on average, and more than 30 minutes being read to, according to the Kaiser data. Child advocates wish those numbers were higher, but even so, it’s clear that most babies’ routines are not dominated by videos.
Over the past two years, I’ve examined the research on how videos, television and other media affect young children and interviewed scores of parents from many walks of life, and I’ve learned that it helps to consider what I call the three C’s: content, context and the individual child.
Most video content is nearly meaningless to babies less than a year old. (Though there is some evidence that they can imitate on-screen actions, it isn’t until they reach 18 to 24 months that they really start to comprehend what they see.) What matters is context and the child’s developmental needs.
Parents who think about context make sure that videos don’t become a substitute for happy moments of interaction and play. They still take their babies to the playground, build towers with them on the floor and read to them. Many studies, including the new one about baby videos, show that a daily dose of reading helps with language development. It doesn’t take a degree in rocket science to realize that babies need the social interaction that comes with reading — the pointing and labeling, the back-and-forth conversation. Children left alone to watch objects flashing on the TV screen aren’t getting that.
Yet in real life, not every minute of the day can be filled with reading, especially to babies who might rather put the books in their mouths. Sometimes parents watch along with their babies. Sometimes they use videos to get a quick break — to take a shower, clean out the cat’s litter box or steal a look at e-mail messages. Taking care of babies and toddlers is hard work. While videos aren’t a perfect answer, I can tell you that once in a while, they have kept an exhausted mother from going off the deep end.
So just go easy on video flashcards and don’t be misled into thinking they are going to turn your child into a prodigy. Read to and talk to your infant each day. It’s a strategy that many parents already follow. Maybe I shouldn’t be so embarrassed after all.
Lisa Guernsey is the author of the forthcoming “Into the Minds of Babes: How Screen Time Affects Children From Birth to Age Five.”

一袋子宁静

沙发，支持一下。

happy_99

有时候就是这样，家长让很多东西在科学的幌子下取代了自己应该完成的任务。

梦幻妖精

Baby Einstein 挺好的，当动画片看呗，应该比动画片有价值罢