This morning my husband flipped through television channels and paused on the infomercial for “Your Baby Can Read!”. I’d seen parts of this infomercial before, but have to admit I’ve never watched the whole thing. What I know about the product is it’s a series of videos designed to help young children learn to read. It’s popular because it purports to take advantage of a small window of superlearning that babies have, and teach them language skills before this window of opportunity closes forever. It was created by a child development specialist because he wanted his children to have wholesome television to watch while they were in daycare. The half-hour long infomercial has endorsements from multiple teachers, and shows clips of children as young as nine months recognizing words written on flashcards and pointing to corresponding objects around the room. The images are compelling; it’s pretty amazing to see a baby reading, and it’s intriguing to think that we can purchase a product or use a technique that unlocks some extraordinary potential in our child and set up for success in life. But there’s something about the pitch that bothers me. Read the rest of this entry »
Archive for Television
Should Superkids be the Goal of Parenting?
My name is Yo Gabba Gabba, and I like to dance!
As I read reports of the East Coast being snowed in and I look outside and see rain, I think about what parents are doing with their kids as many of them are homebound. If there’s snow there’s outside play, for a time, and there’s always the toys and games that we always have. But what about that pastime that many of us enjoy — television? As an author of a natural parenting blog, I feel like it’s a bit taboo to even mention the boob tube, but ours gets turned on from time to time (and, ok, a LOT during football season) Now, I’m definitely not advocating allowing your child to spend hours in front of a television screen. But there are a couple shows my son and I enjoy together. Yo Gabba Gabba is one of them, and its multiple ways of getting the wiggles out has kept both of us sane on more than one occasion. Read the rest of this entry »
Mama Eve Blog 
Mean Girls & Mommyhood
January 6, 2010 · Filed under Activities, General Parenting, Healthcare, Paradigms of Health, Television, Vaccinations · Tagged double x, mean comments, vaccination debate
Yesterday I read an article in Double X about a lawsuit involving libel and major players in the vaccination debate. The article wasn’t actually about vaccinations; it was about a vaccination safety advocate suing a vaccination supporter, and the author of the article ended up saying she was a supporter of the debate, even though she was a supporter of vaccinations. I wrote a comment in response saying how important I thought the debate was too. If it wasn’t for the efforts of vaccinations safety advocates, vaccinations would not be as safe as they are today. Long term studies on their effects wouldn’t be done, and who knows what kind of things would be in our vaccinations. As I did in this blog entry on vaccinations, I suggested an alternative to the current medical paradigm, and didn’t mention whether or not I’d vaccinated my own child. The response, as I anticipated, was harsh, but I was a little surprised at how harsh it was. And it wasn’t that it was aimed (sometimes) at me, but that it was aimed at the anti-vaccination crowd in general. It struck me how polarized mommyhood, like all politics, has become. Read the rest of this entry »
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