Baby Einstein Debate

I guess I was ahead of my time....

I didn't really ever "get" the whole Baby Einstein craze. Sure, I registered for the DVDs and CDs before Alex was born. Everyone was swearing up and down how amazing and wonderful they were. These were people I trusted, so why wouldn't I believe them?

Got a couple of the CDs, listened to them. They were alright. Definitely soothing. We would pop one in and listen to it quietly before putting Alex down in his crib. Then after he was a few months old, I popped in one of the DVDs. I didn't get it. It was just toys and music. I know I'm not the target audience, but I thought to myself, "How is this going to make my kid smarter?"

Disney, which now owns the rights to "Baby Einstein" and everything associated with it, is offering replacements or refunds to parents. Read an article here:

http://www.chicagotribune.com/health/chi-talk-baby-einsteinoct26,0,1582305.column

Now, don't get me wrong, I enjoyed the CDs and even some of the DVDs. Alex, thankfully, never paid that much attention to them. He liked the music, but wasn't really interested in the pictures.

There was one DVD that I popped in that kind of freaked me out. It was the "Language Nursery" DVD. My friend Amy had warned me that particular episode was a little odd, but I gave it a shot anyway. "Baby Beethoven," "Baby Mozart," even "Baby Monet" I have no problem with. But this "Language Nursery" thing was freaky. It claimed to introduce different languages to your child. I'm not sure that hearing nursery rhymes in Russian, French, and Japanese was beneficial to Alex, especially when I had no idea what these narrators were saying. But I only attempted to play the DVD a couple of times before I gave up on it. It's been safely tucked away at the back of the video cabinet.

I'm not an advocate of plopping your kid in front of the TV for extended periods at any age... let alone as an infant. But it's nice to know that the company is now acknowledging that there is no educational benefit to these CDs and DVDs.

So here's what you have to do:
* you have to send your DVD back.
* you have to fill out the form exactly as it indicates.
* limit of 4 returns/exchanges/refunds per household


http://www.babyeinstein.com/(S(3qnoffi1whnnnt55h2ljk355))/parentsguide/satisfaction/upgrade_us.html

We have other Baby Einstein products that we love. I honestly don't know what we would have done with out the Play Gym that we received as a shower gift. Alex lived on that thing until he learned to crawl off of it. He loved it! And it was brightly colored and fun for him. So I'm not knocking the entire product line.

We also are huge fans of "Little Einsteins" the show... and have some of the toys that go along with that.

But the Language Nursery is going back!