Claims that babies can read may be deceptive, according to an FCC investigation.
I’m guessing you’ve seen those commercials where some chatty eleven month old appears to be sight reading simple words at a mile a minute—ball, dog, car, chair—all thanks to a miraculous breakthrough in baby reading that can be yours for three easy payments of $19.99. It’s impressive to watch. It’s also unsettling to see an infant tearing through flashcards like Paula Dean through a chicken fried steak while your own offspring dribbles Lucky Charms down her bib in an Umizumi induced stupor.
This is the sort of thing that can make a parent feel inadequate. Surely if you love your child and want her to succeed, you’ll reach for the phone and order this DVD set right now (operators are standing by). But it turns out that, at best, these miracle reading claims were wildly overblown and now the company that promised your baby could learn to read is going out of business rather than fight in court (read about the Federal Trade Commission complaint here).
We should have seen this coming, some of you probably did, but thousands of people decided to drop a wad of cash in hopes that doing so would make their little one some kind of superstar (and, by association, make them great parents). Purveyors of all things baby/child know two crucial things about us breeders: 1) we all want to give our children the very best and 2) we have no idea what, exactly, that means. We’re easy targets. I’ve been as guilty as anyone and probably will be again—even though I know that the only result our time spent watching baby Baby Einstein is that I can no longer hear Eine Kleine Nachtmusik without singing “I love balloons, I love, I love balloons!” (and a totally unsurprising study from the University of Washington agrees.)
Maybe the problem is that we are used to having all the answers at our disposal. When the entire collected knowledge of humanity can be accessed on your phone while sitting in traffic, it’s reasonable to imagine that there’s a quick fix to the relentless and confounding issues we face as parents.
On the one hand, of course, this is a sign that we really want to do right by our children. On a less flattering note, it’s also a sign that we’re lazy—and not just when it comes to parenting. Year after year, sketchy entrepreneurs get rich selling us ridiculous pills and plans to make us thin, systems and seminars that promise to make us rich, ancient herbal remedies for everything that ails us and—in this case—DVDs and books that promise a better, brighter child. We race to embrace these thing because we’re desperate to avoid the monotonous, soul-numbing work that each of these goals otherwise demands.
We should know better. There’s no gimmick or trick because parenting, like most things in our lives, is about paying attention on a daily basis, listening and responding to needs, adapting and evolving, relentless self-evaluation, diligence, patience and unconditional love. It’s an obvious list but, when we’re mired in the day to day grind of raising children, who can blame someone for wanting a shortcut?
I hope that the next time some splashy ad makes unbelievable promises, I’ll all remember the lesson of the quick-fix reading-baby-sham. But bet I’ll forget and fall for the same thing again. If only I’d taken a little more ginko biloba … .
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