Baby Einstein offering refunds to US parents: your thoughts?

[HelenMumsnet]

Hello.

Radio FiveLive would love to know what Mumsnetters' reactions are to this news story that Disney, owners of the Baby Einstein brand, are offering refunds to US parents - in a move, which, anti-Baby-Einstein campaigners are saying, is a 'tacit admission that the DVDs don't improve your baby's intellect'.

So, what do you think?

Do your babies/toddlers watch these DVDs? And are you shocked to think they might not be as brain-stimulating as was claimed?

Or do you think the whole idea of 'educational' DVDs for babies was a bit of a dodgy concept in the first place?

Do tell (please)!

we were given 2 as presents when dd1 was born. i put one Baby Bach) on for about 5 mins and thought it sounded dreadful. if you want your child to appreciate Bach at 3 months then turn on Classic FM.

a friend (American) was all excited over it, trying to sell it to me as the best things for our PFBs and I had the most cringe worthy convo with her faking enthusiasm while screaming inside "woman can't you see it is just rubbish?"

We have some as dd likes them and were useful for pre bed wind down before she got into in the night garden.
And agree If you are stupid enough to buy the idea they will improve kids intellect by DVD then you need more than a class action to help you.

My dd loved these when she was a baby but I certainly didn't think they'd make her bright.

But it aint rocket science - interesting shapes, textures and sounds, of course babies like it. I only wished I'd thought of it before Julie whatshername Wilson because they're enormously successful and must be very cheap to make.

So I viewed them as entertainment and nothing more. And Mozart in the background is pleasant, unlike almost any other baby tv programme, so they were great from that pov.

The idea of a refund is quite amusing though, how are they going to prove they didn't stimulate a baby's brain? With scans? Silly idea.

I never thought it would raise a child's iq. they mgiht just learn some things sooner, rather than a fortnight later, and really that makes so little difference!

Lol at brain scans for masuring babys iq.
I mean, how do you know your kid wouldn't have been a total dumbass if they hadn't watched them?
Disney should hire me for their PR dept...

I have to admit that I bought one of these videos for my PFB and delighted in the fact that she stared gormlessly at the screen whilst I preened at her intellect.

In my defence, this was 8 years ago and I hadn't yet discovered MN - that came when she was 6m old.

We had one of the original ones too - before it was bought by Disney. I also used it to have a shower. Before I got it I used to plonk DS in front of MTV. It was that or Sky News which was full of reports of the War on Terror - this was back in Oct 2001 and we were in a serviced apartment in Sofia with 3 English TV channels. I figured Baby Einstein or Mozart was marginally better for his development. Mind you he is markedly under-achieving at the moment. Maybe I should sue?

ROFL at some of these.

And thank you all very much.

I bought Baby Mozart and a couple of the others and used them occasionally with my first child. It never occurred to me to expect great things to come out of it. Were those claims even being made in the UK?
It was just sparkly telly on a par with baby watching washing machine going round as pp has said.
The animal one was quite handy for helping to learn names and had cute footage of dogs running in slow-mo etc. No biggy.

good grief! We got them cos DS loved to watch them. I actually forgot they were supposed to be educational (!)
His fave was also when the monster jumped up and went "bleurgh"
dd didn't take to them though

The company was making false claims. Any human with a little sense should have been dubious about a dvd improving their child's intelligence.

By all means punish the company for spouting garbage in order to make big bucks, but don't compensate the daft parents.

WWW! Lovely to see you again!

I love how people think playing classical music to babies will make hem love it when they are older. I hate all genres of music that my parents played to me when I was a kid. I'm sure that's natural.
Having said that, ds still listens to nice music (as opposed to stuff written for children) but that's only because I can't stand casio keyboards and drum machines

BarakObamastransitvan - check out today's Times. Times2 section p.2. Last paragraph.

Er what?Did peoplereally think IQ would be raised by these DVDs?

We had a few (in fact think we have a boxed set somewhere) that we bought becuase the boys liked them, we found the classical music less annoying than teletubbies et al,and that was it really.

Saying that, on the basis that Einstein is often presupposed to have been autistic (actually the story reads Aspergers but he also reputedly had speech delays so that means autism),maybe the DVD's did indeed cause my children to turn into Baby Einsteins ands develop ASd.... Hmmm....

Well... I think MNHQ already know my opinion... but more importantly, are you going to continue to have them as a sponsor?