Dr. Titzer’s Response to the Baby Einstein Articles

Why is it that so many people are taking an all or none view on baby DVDs? The content varies so dramatically among the various baby DVDs that this approach is not a logical approach. If one looks at the variety of different baby videos, it is easy to see that most are passive, entertainment-based DVDs designed to occupy the baby in a fun way while the parent is busy.

I have been an infant researcher and educator for more than 15 years now and I would not suggest showing these types of videos to babies and toddlers. I believe that in order for a DVD to be helpful for babies and toddlers, all of the following conditions must be met:

1) The DVDs must be interactive — not passive.

2) The DVDs must be multi-sensory. In other words, what the babies see and hear should go together logically. In addition, babies and toddlers should be encouraged to say words and do physical actions related to what they are seeing and hearing. This multi-sensory approach is very important because infants and toddlers have tens of thousands of new synapses forming every second. Many of these new connections go from the visual cortex to the auditory cortex and to and from the somatosensory cortex, if the babies do some action. Many of the baby DVDs actually show infants visual images while playing sounds (usually classical music) that do not go with those images. This means that the new synapses would not go together in a logical way.

3) The DVDs must teach the children something of lasting value. If you watch many of the baby videos, you will see that there is very little content of any value to the baby besides an entertainment value.

4) The DVDs should be designed to teach babies language skills. The videos mentioned in the recent study have very little spoken or written language. There are only a few dozen spoken words in most of those videos compared to hundreds or even thousands of words in some other baby videos.

While I was studying infant development at Indiana University, my first daughter was only a baby. I did not like any of the video options that were available at that time, because they were too passive and did not teach enough language skills, so I designed a video that would teach her receptive, spoken, and written language while she was at the babysitter’s house. The Your Baby Can Read! videos are designed to be interactive, multi-sensory, educational, and language-rich — all of these factors would be more likely to increase a child’s vocabulary.

In the recent study that was released, it stated that babies learned fewer words watching Brainy Baby and Baby Einstein videos, the study was actually a telephone survey for both the TV viewing time and the number of words that the child knew. I am not surprised that babies who only watched entertainment videos would score lower on verbal scores. These videos have very few spoken words, so watching them would give the children fewer opportunities to learn words compared to children who were watching videos with more language or who were doing other learning activities besides watching TV. It is also important to realize that this study could not have shown a causal relationship due to the way it was conducted. It does not show that watching those videos caused their vocabularies to be lower.

A considerable amount of research shows that infants and toddlers have a natural window of opportunity for learning language. While most of the other baby videos have little language in them, our Your Baby Can Read! DVDs are actually designed to teach the babies and toddlers written, spoken, and receptive language.

• Studies show the earlier the child is taught to read, the better the child reads.

• Studies show that the earlier the child is taught to read the more likely the child actually wants to read.

• The gap between the early readers and the later readers tends to increase over time, showing the long-term effects of early reading.

• Lower IQ children tend to benefit the most from learning to read early.

• We have many thousands of parents who have written us notes telling us how well their babies and toddlers are reading after watching our videos.

• My daughter, Aleka, who was the first person to watch our DVDs, is now 16 years old. She has already graduated from high school with 50 college credits from her AP classes. She still loves to read and reads at an extremely high level. Her little sister, Keelin, is on the same path.

Baby DVDs can be used as a great learning tool — especially if the parents watch the DVDs with their babies and interact with their babies appropriately.

Dr. Bob Titzer

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