Letters to the Editor
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Baby Einstein is fascinating to babies
I used 'em, but not to make my baby smarter. I used it to give myself a freakin' break. My babies were engrossed. I took a shower, or maybe just sat there and stared at the super low-production valued Mozart. To this day, both my kids can hum Mozart, Beethoven, Bach--and identify the composers when they hear them on the car radio . . . is that really so terrible? I don't think so. Yet I certainly don't attribute their good intellects to Baby Einstein for god's sake. They're smart because they have smart parents.
But yeah, the marketers do prey and I like this article for pointing this out. The baby-proofers. Good god. I had a cash-strapped friend who spent twelve-hundred bucks to have a railing installed in front of her hearth to save the baby from bonking it's little head on the fireplace. That's just idiocy.
As far as the classes: I felt so crazily isolated after the birth of my first. When he was six weeks old, I joined a mommy and me support group and it was the best thing, to this day, that I've ever done for my kids (now 5 and 8). I learned so much from other moms. We met in parks. We talked about how hard it was to transition from being a corporate big wig to a milk machine. We were sad together about our bodies. We were overjoyed together about how much we loved our babies. Moms need to get together in some organized way. I swear, it should be mandated. One member of our mom-gang had post-partum psychosis. She told us about how her son would appear as a demon to her sometimes. We marched her into the pediatrician's office, and then drove her to her psychiatrist appointments and she got help. Her boy is fine now.
I guess I'm saying this: if it brings you together with other moms, it's OK to spend the extra bucks. If it claims to raise your kid's IQ, it's probably bullshit.