Last week, I provided some guidelines for when TV viewing for babies and toddlers can be beneficial to the children. This week, I will address the continuing controversy surrounding this topic. In 1999, the American Academy of Pediatrics took the all or nothing position that children shouldn’t watch any TV before age two. Pediatricians generally study medicine, but often give advice on many other topics. For example, in the 1970s, the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) stated that women should not breastfeed. They made this public statement even though the average number of nutrition classes that pediatricians take is just over one. They recanted their statement later, due to an overwhelming amount of data showing they were wrong.

Now consider that the average number of classes taken by pediatricians about how infants learn is lower than their average number of nutrition classes – yet many pediatricians give advice out on how infants learn on a regular basis. This is important because the AAP’s advice on this topic was not originally based on data. First, many pediatricians have very little experience staying at home with babies on a consistent basis and they may or may not understand all of the day-to-day experiences that many parents face. Second, while there were three studies that supported the anti-television position taken by the American Academy of Pediatrics, there were significant flaws with each.

The first study was reported by the AAP in 1999. It showed that babies who watched TV had shorter attention spans than babies who did not watch TV. The major flaw with their study was they did not distinguish between the content of the various programs viewed by the babies. Babies were actually watching sporting events, the news, soap operas, dramas, comedies, entertainment-based children’s shows, or whatever else the parents were watching or showing them. All of the programs were grouped together and no groups of programs were analyzed separately. It is not surprising that there was no benefit for the babies who were watching television in general. I don’t think anyone would expect that viewing typical TV programs would be beneficial to babies.

The second study was completed by the Kaiser Family Foundation in 2003. They reported that none of the companies that they contacted provided any evidence that babies who watch DVDs had any benefit. They did not contact anyone associated with the Your Baby Can Read! program, or we would have provided them with evidence that babies can learn to read while watching our DVDs.

The third and most recent study supporting the AAP’s position was published by researchers at the University of Washington in 2007, and stated that babies who watched the Baby Einstein DVDs or the Brainy Baby DVDs had lower vocabularies than babies who did not watch those DVDs. The more time spent watching Baby Einstein or Brainy Baby DVDs, the lower the child’s vocabulary. I intentionally avoided watching the Baby Einstein DVDs because I did not want anyone to think I copied either company, even though I made my original homemade videos about six years prior to their first video.

After watching them, it’s clear that the Your Baby Can Read! DVDs and the Baby Einstein DVDs are not at all similar. The first Baby Einstein DVD that I watched was Baby Beethoven. It had zero spoken words! It was surprising to me that these DVDs could be so popular. The first “Special Feature” listed on the back cover of the DVD was “Repeat Play,” so busy parents could leave their babies to watch the wordless DVD more than once. Our Your Baby Can Read! DVDs have thousands of spoken words that narrate what the babies are seeing. This helps explain why so many babies who use our DVDs are also talking early in addition to reading early.

The differences are so large that over time, babies who watch our DVDs would be exposed to many thousands of additional words more during their “TV time” than babies who view the Baby Beethoven DVD or many of the other baby DVDs. While some Baby Einstein DVDs do contain spoken language, rarely does that spoken language clearly match what the baby sees; therefore, even when the narrators are talking, the baby’s comprehension would not benefit much.

In summary, reduce or eliminate all TV shows or programs for your baby. However, when all of the five conditions listed here are met, then please show the DVDs without feeling guilty because you are using the Your Baby Can Read! DVDs to help your child – not simply to help yourself.