PARENTING:Parents do not need to buy any kind of 'educational' tools to further their child's development
EARLIER THIS year, the mighty Walt Disney Company was forced to offer refunds to parents who bought the best-selling Baby EinsteinDVDs.
The decision was a triumph for an organisation in the US called the Campaign for a Commercial Free Childhood (CCFC) which filed a complaint for false and deceptive advertising in 2006.
It maintained that, far from being the educational tool Disney claimed them to be, the Baby EinsteinDVDs and their spin-offs were actually a hindrance to children's development. The DVDs are popular in Ireland too.
The CCFC campaign was endorsed by researchers in 2007 at the University of Washington and Seattle Children’s Hospital Research Institute. They found that, for every hour a day that infants spent watching DVDs, they understood six to eight fewer words than infants who do not watch them.
The American Association of Paediatrics reiterated its view that children under the age of two should not, in any circumstances, watch television.
The Walt Disney Company was forced to drop the words “educational” from the DVDs along with egregious claims that they are a “rich and interactive learning experience that . . . fosters the development of your toddler’s speech and language skills”.
The campaign by the Campaign for a Commercial Free Childhood (CCFC) chimes with the views of one of a world authority on early childhood development.
Prof Stuart Shanker of York University in Canada, who was in Dublin earlier this month to launch a new childcare initiative in Ballymun, said there was no substitute for interaction between parent and child.
His central message was that parents do not need to do anything out of the ordinary, or buy any kind of “educational” DVD to further their child’s development.
Shanker launched youngballymun’s Ready, Steady, Grow service which is dedicated to children aged zero to three and their families. Ready, Steady, Grow is a universal service for every child born in Ballymun.
Youngballymun was established two years ago as a prevention and early intervention programme. It is jointly funded by the Office of the Minister for Children and Youth Affairs and the Atlantic Philanthropies, US billionaire Chuck Feeney’s charity.
Its aim is to foster the development of children in an area that was once synonymous with deprivation and crime. Youngballymun is being rolled out in two five-year phases until 2016.
Shanker's views will reassure parents who are bombarded with DVDs, CDs such as Baby Mozartand electronic toys all holding out a promise that they will improve their infant's development.
“Neuroscience proves that playing, touching, paying attention or talking at a level that comforts the baby, for example, are the building blocks for healthy infant brain development,” he explains.
“These brain-to-brain experiences are vital for sensory and motor development as well as helping the child to self-regulate later on so that he can control and understand temper, emotions, stress or attention span.”
Every child is different and every child rewards patient attention, he believes.
“We want to get them more aroused so they get interested and sometimes we want to get them to calm down a little bit, and be less aroused.
There is no such thing as a lazy child or a stupid child or a bad child. There are kids that provide different types of challenges.
“It is better that we understand them.”
His presentation emphasised the importance of interaction between primary caregiver, either a parent or a guardian, and the child especially in the first year.
The baby learns through the caregiver’s expressions, tone of voice, gestures and facial expressions. Babies look to their caregivers to understand new situations. These vital brain stimulations cannot be obtained from watching television or a DVD.
“If a kid is spending too much time alone watching these videos, what is not happening are these interactions back and forth. It is the interactions that lead to language development or intelligence. It is everything that the kids are doing with their mums and dads,” he explains.
Shanker says there is growing evidence that children are being exposed to too much stimuli, particularly television.
This was being attributed to growing noise pollution, especially the effects of television, and demographic changes which meant that infants were not spending enough time either with a parent or a childminder.
Along with the interaction of parents, children need a quiet environment to develop themselves.
He defined self-regulation as meaning the steps a child takes to soothe itself, a vital step in maturing as a human being. “If they get angry or if they get frustrated or they get afraid, they can calm themselves down, control their impulses, deal with their frustration. These are all things that the child learns from their primary caregivers.”
Shanker says he fears that infants who do not have an ability to self-regulate might turn out to be adults with a lack of empathy and will be more vulnerable to addictive or risky behaviours in later life.
He says President Barack Obama had referred to the “crisis of empathy” in a celebrated speech three years ago, before he was elected.
The then Senator Obama said the definition of growing up was that “the world doesn’t just revolve around you” and to empathise was “to see the world through those who are different from us – the child who’s hungry, the laid-off steelworker, the immigrant woman cleaning your dorm room”.
Shanker admits he is very impressed by the work of youngballymun. “They thought it through very carefully before they hit the ground, they had a well worked out model before they started. They have brought in the right people.
“A programme like this might be the best thing on paper but if you don’t have the right people, it won’t fly.”