Fiona McCade: TV learning for tots no channel to genius

LIKE all parents, I secretly think my child is a genius. He is, I’m sure. The only problem is that he doesn’t show it. Still, if he doesn’t eventually stun the world with his amazing intellect, it won’t be for want of me trying.

As soon as I brought my brilliant little bundle back from the hospital, I ordered the full set of Baby Einstein DVDs, in the certain belief that, even if Junior wasn’t showing much inclination to do anything but sleep and poop, having the DVDs on in the background would eventually send his synaptic activity off the scale.

And I suppose it did, but not in the way I expected. The first time I sat my cherub in front of the television, confronted with a Mozart soundtrack and a succession of brightly coloured, revolving double helixes (“Look, Cherub! Look! DNA!”), he screamed the tenement down.

But even that didn’t stop me. I subscribed to the Baby TV channel and showed him a host of other brain-building programmes. I simply couldn’t live with myself unless I did everything I could to stimulate the power of Junior’s amazing mind. I just knew I had to eliminate the possibility that in years to come, after receiving his 29th rejection letter from Burger King, he might turn to me and say: “This is all YOUR fault! Now ALL my class are either research fellows at Oxford or working for Alan Sugar, and you were the ONLY mum who never bought anything from Baby Einstein!”

Sadly for my wallet, my self-esteem and my son, I now know it was all in vain. New findings announced this week at the annual conference of the American Academy of Pediatrics seem to show that children under the age of two learn nothing from TV programmes – however educational – because their brains aren’t sufficiently developed to understand them.

Great. Now they tell me. And if I’m honest, I know it’s true, because after years of exposure to “educational” programming I have a six-year-old who thinks farts are funny, can’t be doing with school and doesn’t yet know a word of Mandarin, despite the best efforts of CBeebies’ Lingo Show.

I also admit that there were times that I left Junior in front of the television, not because I wanted him to absorb vast tracts of knowledge, but because it was the only way I could take a shower/make a phone call/ handle hot liquids in peace. And I’m not going to apologise for that. Worse things happen. At least I never left him sitting in front of Jeremy Kyle.

But when I think of how much those DVDs cost, and how much more he preferred to put straws into a cup and take them out again – it makes my head spin. Unfortunately, I was so set on boosting his learning skills, I ignored the fact that the worthy educational programmes weren’t necessarily his favourites. I remember one night – when he was aged about 18 months – he couldn’t sleep and we ended up watching a documentary about beautiful female film stars. He was rapt. If he could have said “hubba, hubba!” he would have. I suppose I learned something.

Just to be clear – my son hasn’t spent his entire childhood parked in front of the TV. I talk and play with him too. I honestly don’t take constant advantage of the big, rectangular babysitter in the corner, but I certainly thought that when he was watching those brainy baby programmes, they were doing him some good. I think it’s a trap many parents fall into; show us a few finger-puppets twirling around to the sound of a glockenspiel and we get all excited that we’re speeding up human evolution.

But hey, we’re not. And I suppose it was always obvious, considering that nobody ever played Baby Einstein DVDs to Einstein.

Still, he managed quite well without them, and by all accounts he wasn’t an unusually brainy baby either. And that makes me feel much more confident about the future of my little not-quite-genius. Now, if I can just find something on Google about six-year-old Albert finding farts funny, I’ll feel even better.