Founded in 1996, the Baby Einstein Co. was sold to Disney five years later. It was lauded by President George W. Bush in his 2007 State of the Union address as “representing the great enterprising spirit of America.”
And now it’s representing the litigious spirit of America by suing the University of Washington.
One creator of the Baby Einstein video series is preparing to take the University of Washington to court after two scathing critiques of the Disney-backed toddler video series.
Following on a pair of studies asserting that the popular baby videos may actually hinder child development, Baby Einstein co-creator William Clark has filed a lawsuit claiming the university failed to respond to public records requests.
The subtext, obviously, is whether teevee is good for kids—just looking at the BE website made me a little dumber.
Smooth move. This guy is basically asking the courts to kill his company. The UW science is spot on. Baby Einstein is a crock of shit you shouldn’t let your kids anywhere near.
Correction:
The BE company is owned by DIsney now, or some such. The _company_ is not suing, so far as I’ve seen reported. The folks suing no longer have control, they’re only trying to “protect their legacy” .
@1: But who’s gonna babysit TVDinner Junior when mommy has to get her drink on? I can’t have the kid getting in the way of my “me” time!
The whole notion of people suing scientists who publish results they don’t like is frightening.
TV in child’s room means that when I’m cooking dinner, I don’t have to watch children’s programming, and my little one can unwind after a day at school and after-school activities.
TV isn’t bad. Too much TV is bad.
My nephews love those videos. Most of them look like they cost about $20 to make.
Me watched lots teevee when me growed up and me not think me dumber.
#5: make sure you know how much TV is enough for your child and how much is too much. A Seattle-King County public health nurse declared my kid watched “too much TV” because of his ardent superhero play with his peers in preschool. At the time he was watching 45 monitored minutes of morning PBS children’s programming with no superhero content. We didn’t think 45 minutes of PBS was “too much” but chafed when other parents admitted their children watched 2+ hours daily and didn’t think it a problem. The idea that my kid might be adapting to his peers’ TV-influenced superhero play never came to the nurse’s mind.
My personal belief is that the Seattle-King County public health nurse was full of bull, but we kiboshed kiddie programming anyway because “every child is speshul and unique”.
Studies have shown that having a tv in your child’s bedroom statistically lowers their scores in school. TV is not good for children. Parenting is good for children.
Please bear in mind that the Baby Einstein program doesn’t have anything to do with superheroes or other older kid’s preschool programming. Their stuff is for NEWBORNS.
BE is such a crock of shit. I can see the arguments now that. Those damn librul schools are attacking our business’. The idea that you can put a toddler in front of a TV is a nice thought if it worked. It sure would be nice to give parents a break but there just isn’t a way. BE is flat out irresponsible and personally I think it tarnishes the name Einstein.
My grandmother kept me away from any TVs until I was about 7. The first thing I saw on TV was the invasion of Panama. I thought Manuel Noriega was a celebrity of some sort.
Of course, I ended up having a Sega Genesis when that came out, and a SNES, and everything after that. Me and my brother would run out and play “Super Mario”, which involved punching each other in the head or flinging hammers in the air. So there went that “protect the poor kid from TV!” thing.
That UW report came out almost three years ago, BE needs to keep up on their dissenters.
I’d urge everyone misfortunate enough to have a Baby Einstein video to send it back to Disney in exchange for cold, hard cash. Disney will refund $16 for any Baby Einstein video purchased between 2004 and 2009. Just print out the form at this URL:
http://babyeinstein.com/parentsguide/sat…
re: DVD exchange – I guess I can’t paste a full URL into a comment, but just google “The Baby Einstein™ DVD Upgrade / Moneyback Guarantee” and you’ll get to the form you need…
This lawsuit really has nothing to do with Baby Einstein, the company or the videos.
It’s about the Public Records Act. This guy asked for records from a public agency, and he wasn’t happy when the records he got had birthdates redacted.
So, @1, a court is not going to kill his company (it’s not even his company, and his suit involves him as an individual making a request).
And @4, he is suing because he believes a public agency didn’t disclose the records he asked for. The UW deals with this kind of law suit all the time, just like every other public agency in WA. For the UW, suits are often filed by people who want to get at the research in its entirety.
OLPC not OTVPC
This type of record request needs to be answered as completely as possible while not reveling excatly who the babies in the study were. My guess is that William Clark is trying to get at the records to discredit the studies.
On another note any parent that thinks sitting a kid in front of a TV for hours will create a genius or a reader or anything except a child that likes watching TV might want to opt out of parenting… Parenting is tough work modeling good habits and hands on learning will go a lot further then any passive medium of teaching.
You know, when you stop to think about whether to fight science with anything besides science you really ought to give some hard thought to where your life has gone wrong. It doesn’t really matter how, even – legal action, demagoguery, violence, whatever – when you line up opposite science you’re always going to align yourself on the wrong side of history.
I know how to count to 10 in Hebrew because of those videos. I’m SMARTER!!!