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No toy is better than a parent's attention

Fancy toys are no substitute for interaction with a parent.

Date published: 1/8/2006

PARENTS OFTEN ask me about developmentally appropriate toys and activities for their children. It seems that in the last few years, there's been an explosion of toys, videos and activities marketed to "stimulate development."

Parenting magazines and daytime television are full of ads for these expensive items, making affluent families feel they must have them all, and families with less disposable income feel guilty if they can't buy them. Like Starbucks, the toy producers created this new niche for their products, making us "need" something we never knew we needed before.

I have to laugh when I see products like the WombSong Prenatal Sound System, which lets parents address their fetuses via microphone, or the BabyPlus Prenatal Education System, a 16-week course for fetuses on rhythmic sounds. Honestly, it's a wonder I ever made it to medical school, because all I heard in the womb was the Beatles.

One of the most amazing examples of creating a new need we didn't know we had is the plethora of classical music toys and videos. Don't get me wrong, classical music is great. But this industry is all based on a study demonstrating the "Mozart Effect," which was carried out in college students who had a temporary, small improvement in performance on spatial-temporal tasks (involving paper cutting and folding) after they listened to Mozart music. Similar studies have not reproduced the original results.

There have been studies showing that listening to Mozart improved rats' ability to get through a maze. And there are studies showing improved math performance, or increased IQ, in children who have music lessons before age 7, particularly in piano playing. But after correcting for the fact that kids who have piano lessons tend to come from more educated and affluent families, the effect is minimal.

There have not been, as far as I'm aware, any studies showing an effect in infants and toddlers passively listening to Mozart, or any other composer. Yet the huge Baby Einstein line of products has made millions off this belief that watching videos with classical music will stimulate babies' development--despite the American Academy of Pediatrics policy on TV.

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Date published: 1/8/2006