Livingston, I Presume

From the department of DUH

Via Salon's Machinist blog comes the not-so-startling news that "educational" DVDs for kids may not result in actual Baby Einsteins. Scientists at the University of Washington found, in the words of Farhad Manjoo, that:

Babies who watch the videos are less verbally proficient than those who do not; researchers found that for every hour that an infant between 8 to 16 months old spends watching a brain DVD, he understands, on average, 6 to 8 fewer words than a kid who didn't do Einstein.

As far as I'm concerned, you don't have to be any kind of scientist--rocket or otherwise--to figure out that these income-sucking DVDs are providing valuable time for parents to make dinner or...you know...blog. That's it. Dancing chickens do not a genius make, people. Of the available, expensive raft of "edutainment" offerings out there, we have found utility in only one: A Baby Einstein CD set of lullabies and other relaxing music. That set put Connery to sleep for at least the first two years of his life, while--undoubtedly--sowing the seeds for raw intellectual firepower due to the subliminal hypnotic suggestion of the magical Mozart.

Mozart is magical--music is magical--but not for any debunked effect on babies' brains. It's such a typically American thing, actually, to take something that the rest of the world enjoys on its merits--music, art, architecture--and try to turn it into a tool. We can't just have kids listening to and enjoying music, we have to use it to help them get into Harvard someday.

And now that parents have been told again and again that TV is verboten for young kids, it's easy to see why it would be comforting to think that your kids were actually learning something rather than having their brains rotted. It's all or nothing, baby. The American Way. If you let your kid watch television, you're a bad parent--or so we've been told. So instead of trying to come up with a common-sense approach--Gosh, maybe an hour of Sesame Street a couple of days a week isn't going to relegate her to a life of Gentlewoman's Cs--we try to circumvent the restrictions by creating "educational" children's programming. Now it's not just OK to let Baby tune in, it's actually neglectful not to, so you'd better get yourself to Costco to by that $179.99 Baby Einstein box set.

Maybe this study--common-sensical as it may seem--could be a start to breaking that cycle. But I wouldn't count on it. If there's one thing we Americans don't know how to do (besides take enough vacations) it's exhibit anything approaching moderation.

TV Karts...just say NO F***IN' way!

I mentioned recently that we don't have access to the iPhone in Montana. In Livingston, we've been denied On Demand cable even though seemingly everywhere else in the whole United States gets it. But I’ve come to accept that we’re a small market, and small markets don’t get to be early-adopters with a lot of new technology. Sometimes I curse it, and other times—as happened when I started reading about new, “kid-friendly” shopping carts with televisions inside—I am thrilled to death to be out of the loop.

TV Karts™ —designed by a New Zealand firm—are described on the manufacturer’s site thusly:

Everyone knows parents of pre-school children have limited time and energy, let alone face what many have come to regard as a necessary evil—grocery shopping. Here is where Cabco comes to the rescue with TV Kart™, which helps parents and caregivers to have a relaxed shopping experience while their children enjoy the magic and fun of 'driving' their TV Kart™ and watching their favorite TV programs—without leaving their parents' side.

Even ignoring the truly awkward construction in that first sentence, there are already more things wrong with this idea than I care to count. And I haven’t even told you the most irritating part. The TV Kart™? It costs a dollar each time you want to use it. That means, in addition to dropping a hundred bucks at the checkout counter with the stuff in the basket, you also get to pay for the basket! But hey, it comes with free Child Zombification Unit, so maybe it’s worth it!

And about that TV… I’m not going to rail against parents who let their kids watch TV, since I am one. Granted, we're strict about it, but Connery is no stranger to “Johnny and the Sprites” and the “Backyardigans”. He likes to watch the occasional half hour, and I like to keep up on such luxurious forms of hygiene as showering. I don’t think it hurts him, but I also don’t delude myself that he’s “learning” anything beyond how to sit still for more than five minutes at a time. Besides, the American Academy of Pediatrics recommends no screen time at all for kids under two, and these carts are being marketed straight to that demographic.

Is there nowhere we can now escape television? It’s not that I relish going to the grocery store with a bored preschooler—it can be very stressful, in fact—but I wouldn’t want to have him zoned out and unwilling to interact with other kids, with adults, and most of all with me. How else is he going to learn about the proper way to behave in public, not to mention how to read labels to make good food choices, avoid slickly marketed junk food and make sure I don’t forget his favorite jam?

I can hear people out there sniffing that if I don’t like them, I shouldn’t use them. True enough. But have you ever tried to explain logically to a child in the grocery store that he just can’t get into that perfectly beautiful cart with its steering wheel, truck-like appearance and magical blue screen? Even without the lure of the tube, my son has to be convinced that grocery shopping is indeed possible without the assistance of one of those “kiddy” carts shaped like cars that are available locally.

According to A Little Pregnant, the shopping baskets are being test-marketed in discount retailers in major cities across the nation. It’s just another reason I’m not always sad that Old Montany is not yet one of those “major cities.” I’ll trade the iPhone for that.

Busted

In an effort to be solid nutritional role models, Chip and I very rarely indulge in sugary desserts. At least while Connery is awake.

So last night, we we were settling in for some ice cream and Grey's Anatomy (was it just me, or did other people feel as if they had been hogtied and forced to watch Addison's new pilot?) when all of a sudden we hear the pitter patter of toddler feet on the floor. Connery sticks his head out of his bedroom (which is right off the TV room) to find his parents in a panic.

Hide the ice cream! Behind the cat! He'll never see it behind the barely 10-pound cat! Why are we cursed with such a frackin' small cat?

"I heard a kind of clinky noise," he says. "Where's the ice cream?"

Back to you, Dick

Dick Button's ears are burning. Scott Hamilton's too. I suppose the rest of the sappy, dippy, screechy (the three lost dwarfs?) figure skating commentators should be on my list too, but I just haven't managed to learn their names yet.

Chip and I are big Olympic fans, so I confess that we have watched the primetime coverage pretty much every night. We do Tivo it so we can fast-forward through the boring parts and the commercials, but don't tell the Olympic sponsors. Chip is already on his last leg as far as figure skating is concerned. After being tortured by not two but three nights of ice dancing, he wasn't necessarily thrilled to watch the ladies' long program. Still, we both got into it, getting misty-eyed in the appropriate places (the Italian's last skate, Slutskaya's sick mom, Tugba's Turkish sacrifices). What we just could not contend with were the commentators.

It started with the first Russian, Sokolova. Now, I've forgotten whatever I once knew about ice skating. (I don't want to brag, but I *did* skate as a munchkin in what must have been the 1977 Great Falls ice show.) But what I do know is that it's patently unfair to assign stupid pop psychological motives to routines that are similar. When Sokolova two-footed a landing, "her heart wasn't in it." When an American did the same, she was "fighting for every element and showing her Olympic spirit."

And, with all apologies to King Kaufman, whose writing I adore for its ability to make sports interesting even to me, could Dick Button have been a bigger, bitchier queen about this final? It's pretty clear that nothing about today's skaters satisfies him--not their sit-spins, not their laybacks, and certainly not their superfluous hand gestures. Why doesn't he just admit that he hasn't enjoyed figure skating since Sonja Henie left the sport? Meanwhile, I worry that Scott Hamilton is going to have a thrombo every time someone does a jump: "And here's...the...TRIPLE SALCHOW....UNHHHH... RIGHT on!" It can't be good for him.

The woman, whose name I refuse to learn on the grounds that I have enough useless nonsense cluttering my brain currently, generally weighs in with quasi-philosophical, psychological pronouncements such as, "You can see how she skates *on* the ice, that's why she is not competitive with the top skaters." Right. And now to the physics desk, Dick, to explain how the other competitors do what exactly? Skate while encased in ice? Skate several inches above the ice?

Still, the Japanese winner's program was great, and we got to watch a scant few moments of the aerials, which were a loss with no Ales Valenta. And I'm going nuts waiting to see how the Czechs will do in hockey. Too bad there are no Czech bars here.

Updates large and small

Thanks to everyone who has asked about my dad. He's recovering well in the hospital after a silent heart attack last Thursday and a bout with a chronic digestive problem. I'll just say that I have no desire to blog about this. It's too scary to put it all into words, and so I'm currently enjoying my time on that Egyptian river.

I did call the man who was angered by my column, and he was quite reasonable. No harm done.

I got another assignment for a major national women's publication, which makes me very happy.

Connery has been fairly cooperative, at least as far as two-year-olds go. I was able to control him with a moderate degree of success in the grocery store by using a trip to the library as leverage. May he always be motivated by books!

We checked out a real winner while at the library, and I will try to post a review. The book is called I Wanna Iguana, written by Karen Kaufman Orloff and illustrated by David Catrow. Connery would read it day and night if we would let him stay up that long. I also checked out Margaret Atwood's The Penelopiad for myself after losing my battle with Bill Clinton. (It was interesting, really, but in three weeks I ought to be able to get farther than the 1992 presidential elections. Not a GAP dress in sight by the time I needed to return it. As it was, I owe a $.40 late fee just because I had to read far enough to get to the actual first election win.)

It's also been surreal to read the news. From the Cheney shooting to Bush threatening his first veto to make sure we put out ports in the hands of the United Arab Emirates, I sometimes feel as if we have landed in some kind of alternate Bizarro land, where up is down and treason is patriotism. Still, it's good to know that in the grand scheme of things, the biggest threat facing the United States is *not* lax port security, bird flu, ever-widening civil strife that we helped to create in Iraq, or the rampant rise of theocracy and fundamentalism around the world. It's gay people making lifelong commitments to each other and to children who would otherwise have no parents. Oh, and it's women who have to make the wrenching choice of whether or not to carry a pregnancy to term.

And maybe Bode Miller.