BABY EINSTEIN

All truths are easy to understand once they are discovered; the point is to discover them.

--Galileo Galelei  (as quoted in Baby Galileo)

Enjoy the Show!  -- Julie Clark, founder of the Baby Einstein Company

  

Ugh.  Here it is.  The dreaded Baby Einstein post. 

At one point, you would have found no bigger fan of the Baby Einstein series of videos and DVDs than me.  I was always a proponent of buying a new video.  I loved the presentation of classical music.  I loved the introduction to the world of art and science.  And our oldest son really seemed to use the introductions to topics provided by those videos to seek out and acquire more knowledge on topics such as planets and sea creatures.  It really seemed to be a great concept.

Now, if this were a movie, we would slowly fade away from the kids sitting gleefully in front of the TV with an episode of Baby Mozart reflecting in their joyful wide eyes and we would cut to the morning after scene in the movie The Hangover.  What in the world happened and why did we sell all of our Baby Einstein videos on Craig's List?

I have never tried crack cocaine, but I imagine that the effect of that drug on a typical person is in the same category of what happens to our Little Man when he watched Baby Einstein videos.  You would really have to experience his reaction to fully appreciate what I mean.  His energy level goes up to - power-a-small-city levels, his already limited interpersonal interaction regresses, his voice reaches decibels almost inaudible to human ears, and his already constantly moving body- moves faster and wilder than you can imagine.

I can not even pretend to understand the complexities that cause such a strong reaction between our man and those videos.  But I often heard of how hard it is for an addict to give up their compulsions - for tobacco, or alcohol, or drugs or whatever -- how the addict constantly longs for his vice even when clean and sober-- and how easy it is to slip back.  Well, you can add to that list for us --that which is now contraband in our home --  Baby Einstein videos. 

All I know is that to this day, if you give our Little Man paper and some crayons, it is just a matter of time before he writes "Baby Einstein" replete with the mutli-color letters and little hand drawn bespectacled bodiless head of a stick figure that sits up in the corner.  Not to mention the random utterances he still makes about the videos, or the fact that if gets a shot at "Google" his first search is almost always "Baby Mozart."

To be fair to Julie Clark, founder of the Baby Einstein Company, hers are not the only videos banned from our house.  We also had to ban Signing Times and Letter Factory.  [Did you know, every letter makes a sound!?!  Yes, its true!  Really! All 26 of them!]

Long story short, we are no longer Enjoying the Show.