All Things Einstein

Well, classical music is good for everyone to listen to in my opinion, but it really doesn’t seem to help or hurt the baby until they’re old enough to learn about music itself (learn an instrument, etc.) However, everything from talking to music stimulates the same area of the brain responsible for languages, so there’s no reason to believe it’s not helping your baby’s brain develop the connections necessary for language, and some music you need to hear as a baby to have the best understanding of it as an adult (atonal music for instance.)

Now… Baby Einstein in my opinion is overpriced, and dumbed down. The complexity of symphonies and orchestras are what seems to help the most with brain development. The Baby Einsteins I’ve run into are… well… synthesized. The complexity of the different instruments, the different tones, the louder and quieter parts, the faster and slower parts, it’s all gone. Maybe they’ve improved, I know that the “Mozart Effect” series just took orchestra recordings so maybe some Baby Einsteins are better than that. But for the most part Baby Einstein makes me cringe. It’s like they took something beautiful with so many nuances of color and texture and used just the basic colors. No more aquamarine, just blue. Babies don’t need the music dumbed down. It’s so much better just left alone.

So my recommendation is if you want to do something like this for your baby, go to your local music store (Best Buy, whatever) and throw down $3 for a recording of a symphony or orchestra. Much better for them.

If that’s not your cup of tea, remember that it’s the complexity of the music that makes it stimulating. For instance, Bohemian Rhapsody by QUEEN is very complex. It has different speeds, different volumes, different sounds, complex chords that border on atonal at times, just a very complex song. Bagpipes, Native American Atonal chanting, fun celtic music with bagpipes in the background, music with mostly drums in it, all of these are complex and interesting to listen to, and will challenge a baby’s mind to grow. No reason to limit it to just classical.

Anyway, I played and continue to play to my daughter and my unborn boy all sorts of music. It’s fun when they move to the beats. Remember the rule of loud though, if you can’t talk over it, it’s too loud and will cause damage.

Nancy. A lot of what you’re saying actually has been proven false.

First, we know that babies do hear music in the womb and react to it. In fact, some studies have proven that babies have short-term memories while in the womb by showing them react to music, and then later the same reaction to the music, and some evidence pointing towards them reacting to that music out of the womb. In other words, if in the womb they hear certain music then they will be reassured when they hear it out of the womb. This makes sense since babies recognize their parents voices, cry with accents depending on where they are born and the people around them, and more. Also, microphones placed in the womb have shown that there isn’t much interference with the music that is played. Sure they’re not hearing it at “Dolby Quality” but it’s not as garbled as you’d like to think.

Second, the Mozart Effect hasn’t been disproven, if you believe that you don’t quite understand the original studies… and the “Mozart Effect” music CDs and tapes actually aren’t bad in the least. If you like Mozart, they’re a nice collection to have to be honest. They’re actual concert pieces, not synthesized or dumbed down in the least, and honestly I like the pieces they put together, but this CD and Tape set was done in the late 90′s to capitalize on the studies done before people started synthesizing them.

Now, what HAS been disproven is long-term effect on intelligence on children who have Mozart played to them. But that’s not what the researchers originally noticed. They saw an increase in short-term spatial intelligence on children who had Mozart played to them. They never claimed it did long-term increases of intelligence, but did point out that any improvement shouldn’t be sneezed at since it proves that music can affect the brain. Later studies were done and showed that children who learned music (either through theory training, instruments, or something else, not just passively sitting and listening) had long-term intelligence improvements. So… what you are claiming was disproven actually was not something they even theorized. It was something the media blew out of proportion.

There are plenty of studies that support mothers playing music to their babies, in the womb and out of the womb, to help them. If for no other reason than like the original poster said, she really enjoys it. That would lower a mother’s stress levels, which would help the baby’s intelligence that way. There’s really no negative to it, only potential positives.

Ok. Well there really isn’t anything good about Baby Einstein. Especially now that it has been bought out by Disney….evil.

To elaborate, Baby Einstein makes wild promises that using their product or products will create another Einstein or another genius or just a baby that is super duper smart that will get into Harvard and grow up to be a billionaire. Well that is just not so. Like one of the previous answers said, they dumb down the music. They are not played by orchestras. They are “kid-a-fied”. The real instruments are replaced by bells and harps and other ‘go to sleep’ type instruments. They also take out any dissonant notes to make everything “happy” or to a musician ‘simple, boring and lame’.

Your baby doesn’t hear clearly from the womb. The sound that does get there is muffled and distorted. It is also combined with the gurgling of your gut, your heartbeat, swishing of fluids, your talking (which is actually heard more clearly because of the vibrations in your body) etc. So you baby doesn’t really care what it hears. Hearing music is great. But it doesn’t need to be anything specific. And it doesn’t need to be Baby Einstein’s dumbed down simple ‘classical’ crap. Oh also, the Mozart Effect has been proven false…..

As for the Baby Einstein videos……….and it is so sad that someone answered that their daughter loves them……they are even worse. The American Academy of Pediatrics suggests that no child under 2 watch any TV at all. So why in the world are there videos aimed at babies? Claiming to teach babies to read? And claiming to create the next Einstein? Because parents are afraid that if they don’t take all the measures they can to help their babies brain develop as quickly as possible that their child could fall behind in school or could not get into college or not be successful (aka rich) when they are older. So they by an educational video and plant their kid in front of the TV. “My kid loves it!” They claim. “They can’t take their eyes off it!” And they are so focus on the video!” Well, that is true that they are focused on the video, because a baby doesn’t have the willpower or the brainpower to look away. And they are so focused on it because it is OVERSTIMULATING and they shut down. They cannot take in and process the info as fast as it is coming on TV. A baby wasn’t meant to see 6 different farm scenes in 20 seconds, that is not the way the world works. Our world is 3D and a baby needs to experience it in 3D.

Anyway, babies learn better from hands on, active learning than the passive learning that is done through TV. Sure they might memorize the ABC’s if they see them everyday on the TV, but they are not learning how to learn and how to make cognitive connections or how to be creative or how to problem solve ( all things which are very important but are not as easily measured as reciting the ABC’s).

And one final note: Did Einstein have access to Baby Einstein products? If not, how on earth did he become so smart? Pretty good for a person who didn’t even start speaking until the age of 4……