Baby DVDs Impair Vocabulary Acquisition

Many parents, in an effort to give their baby the best head start in life, purchase educational DVDs such as Brainy Baby and Baby Einstein. Although the American Academy of Pediatrics recommends that children should not watch television until two years of age, countless parents rationalize contradicting this standard pediatric advice, seduced by the promise of a smarter child, or maybe at least by the idea of half an hour of babysitting.

Although sophisticated advertising claims the DVDs teach babies to understand and speak earlier, no independent research has supported this claim. Now, a University of Washington, Seattle, study of 8- to 16-month-old babies reports that the babies who watched baby dvds understood an average of six to eight words fewer for every hour per day spent watching baby DVDs, than those who did not watch them.

The study author, Dimitri Christakis, says that other factors, such as parents' educational status and the number of children per household, were controlled for and do not explain the results.

Why vocabulary acquisition was slowed must be explored with further research. One author of the study, Andrew Meltzoff, said "There are only a fixed number of hours that young babies are awake and alert, and these babies are not getting the same linguistic experience" that they would from interacting with adults if that alert time is spent watching DVDs.

While reduced parent-child interaction is an obvious possible cause, other recent research points toward more dramatic, and disturbing, explanations. TV has recently been shown to cause hormonal and brain changes that are linked to attention deficits in adolescence and even the development of alzheimers years later.

So even if we don't know exactly why watching TV -- even educational baby videos -- impairs kids' cognitive development, we do know that we are actively lowering their IQs every time we let them do it.

About the Author

Dr. Laura Markham, the Dear Abby of Parenting, is a clinical psychologist who hosts the popular advice column "Ask Dr. Laura" at the parenting web site YourParentingSolutions.com, The Good Dr. answers questions from parents of infants through teens, offering parent-tested solutions you can use every day to connect with your kids and create a richer family life. Her work appears regularly on a dozen parenting sites and in print, and she frequently speaks with groups of parents, both online and in person, about transforming their parenting. Dr. Laura lives in New York with her husband, son and daughter.