Disney’s recently announced decision to offer a refund to parents who purchased its popular “Baby Einstein” videos vindicates researchers who had been attacked by the company. Their study, published in the prestigious journal Pediatrics, showed that each daily hour of viewing of these kinds of “educational” videos by children aged 8-16 months was associated with a decrease in vocabulary of about 6-8 words.
When the study was published, Disney’s CEO Robert Iger demanded that the researchers retract the press release that accompanied it. They refused. Now, Disney is offering refunds. The videos seem to make children more similar to the real baby Einstein than to the adult genius they were trying to replicate: Einstein himself developed language late and did not speak until he was four. So parents, what can we do now to healthily distract the littlest ones? There’s gotta be something…