I feel vindicated.

My heart goes out to all the parents who saved their scarce pennies and plopped their little Rickies, Autumns, and Laquandas down in front of the tube for 5 hours daily, hoping to produce a, well, Einstein.

New research shows, incontrovertibly, that these videos actually LESSEN a child's vocabulary - owing to the way in which language is presented.

FAIL DISNEY.

Baby Einstein is issuing full refunds on their DVDs
http://www.babyein...on/upgrade_us.html
http://www.commerc...insteinrefund.html
If you've purchased a Baby Einstein DVD any time in the last five years, you're entitled to a full refund, thanks to the work of the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood which thinks that mayyyybe they don't exactly make babies into Einsteins.

We're all for videos as entertainment, or to give moms a chance to jump in the shower - provided you know that it's just that, and not an opportunity for your baby's IQ to leap 45 points while you sneak in a shave.

For full details, see this page on Disney's Baby Einstein Website which explains how to either get your money back, or trade to a book or CD of your choice. And actually, some of those CDs are quite nice.

Well imagine this...my old job I personally sorted over 15,000 Baby Einstein DVD's...Then threw half of them away as we couldn't sell them.

glad my kid never watched that. then again, we did things like - read books, play, you know - REAL stuff

My son's grandparents got him "My First Signs" for Easter last year. He watched the vid a few times while I was doing the dishes and learned nothing. I started signing with him without the vids and he picked it up rather quickly. Like someone else said, we do stuff like play and read and go OUTSIDE.

If only it was as easy as just plopping your kid down in front of a TV.

People act like we're nuts when we're in a room with a TV, and we don't let our 6 month old watch it.

TV is a privledge for our kids, if they behave, they can watch some TV. We prefer to actually 'play' with our kids.

Meh, I'll admit we played them along with other kid favorites when our oldest was still crawling, however we did not expect anything other than to have a few minutes of valuable time to make dinner, or clean up the place. Nothing can substitute spending time with your kids doing things like reading, drawing, and spelling. That's the stuff that really pays off.

Got my refund a couple of weeks ago, anyone else?