Bye-Bye Baby Einstein – Now Can we Please Stop the Hype?

Baby Einstein is exactly what it was designed to be – a shiny object to babysit a screaming infant or toddler. 

The children watching Baby Einstein were in many respects smarter than its creators  – not only did they know they were being babysat by a video, but they also knew they really craved recognizable human relationship and some good old fashioned nurturing. 

Yes, small children are fascinated with objects, often the simplest ones.  However, just because everything is fascinating for infants and toddlers because all of it is new, that is not a premise for a learning tool. 

Finally, Some Informed Perspective on Hyped Products?

Getting on Oprah and being hyped as the greatest thing since sliced bread doesn’t mean a product will help your child magically become brilliant.  Parents have been subjected to an endless parade of quick fixes and of all the people specializing in children, parents are often the least informed.  It most likely took a group of scared lawyers at Disney to inject some reality into the hoopla over Baby Einstein, and perhaps we can finally bridge that gap between hype and help to empower parents when it comes to products that benefit children and ones that don’t.

Two Alternatives for Real Learning

1.       Children need to “own” their learning experience

The most meaningful learning for infants and toddlers takes place when they “own” the experience through touching, smelling, tasting and interacting.  Children don’t want to be forced to explore objects in a decided sequence that they don’t control.  Instead, parents should let them explore freely, because exploration is a direct byproduct of the natural human cognitive growth process. 

Products like Baby Einstein completely miss this point.  Sure, the video presents interesting objects but when someone else besides the parent or child himself decides which objects are presented, for how long and in what manner – that is worst teaching tool possible for a small child.  They simply get frustrated and learn little or nothing.

2.       More Stories and Context

Even Albert Einstein himself likely knew that context made a story logical to his adult audiences.  It’s even more important for small children.  

Plotline, character development, continuity, predictable behaviors….they may sound sophisticated, but they are essential for intellectual growth in young children, and that is why books, videos, role play, theater and any presentation of life in artistic form is best when it relies at least partly on story. 

Story is what gets it to all make sense for a young child, for whom every iota of human behavior is still new and fresh. 

Parents should repeatedly encourage learning through story, so a child can take the bits and pieces he does recognize and use those to make sense of what he doesn’t.  Baby Einstein – which only presents long strings of random images – flunks the storyline test.

How to Make Your Teen Financially Savvy

What is the single most important financial principle that teens should know before they head out into the real world?

Entrepreneurship, in and out of the workplace.

Knowing how to forge a new idea, build a plan or strategy around it, anticipate potential pitfalls, confirm demand and interest in that idea, and build partnerships to improve its success and sustainability. 

Why?  The world economy – as it is developing now and as it will be when today’s teens are in their 20s — is one that rewards entrepreneurial skills, both in and out of the workplace.

The days of one-country corporate careers are over, and the keys to both long-term financial prosperity and career fulfillment for coming generations of graduates are agility and momentum. The pace of change in business is exponentially faster than it was even one generation ago, and expectations for cross-disciplinary application are higher.

Those who can move and change quickly, pull together new ideas that work in a short amount of time, and quickly mobilize forces around R&D, service design and production on a world scale will be the ones to beat.

Steps Parents Can Take Today

What can parents do to help teach their teen that principle? 

• Encourage financial savvy, such as savings for return, investments, stocks and mutual funds in elementary and middle school.
• In those early years, encourage children to participate in family finance discussions, learn to read bank, mortgage and credit card statements, practice calculating tips at restaurants, figuring sale prices at department stores, bargaining for a better deal at the fresh market, etc.
• Even an 8-year-old can come up with a plan to help the family save money on ATM fees, electricity usage, and groceries.

How can teens put that principle into practice?  

Parents should start supporting and brainstorming entrepreneurial activity with their TWEENS and teens as early as middle school and fully in high school.

• Children between the ages of 10 and 15 can mow lawns, babysit, hold bake sales, walk dogs, and run errands for local elderly and busy moms.
• Children between 15-18 can engineer creative solutions to everyday problems and develop those into full-blown businesses.
• Buy your high school student a subscription to entrepreneurship magazines and encourage them to study the examples of others who have come up with “big ideas” and turned them into businesses.
• Find your high school student a mentorship or apprenticeship, because these experiences are known to not only better ensure graduation, but also encourage better academic performance and a stronger commitment to college and to ambitious plans post high school and college.
• Try to achieve a mentorship in technology or other innovative industry. In Economy 3.0, every field will need tech savvy, and having these skills will give your child an advantage.
• Encourage your child to explore apprenticeships in at least 3 different fields, especially business or finance, technology and science. These are areas that support most successful entrepreneurial ventures of the next economy.

Worried about your high schooler taking college courses? You shouldn’t be.

When high schoolers think ahead and pursue college credit early, they are motivated, and motivation is the #1 obstacle to high school graduation, not just for at-risk students, but all students.

For years, our high schools have needed to catch up with the modern momentum of today’s youth, but instead remain anchored in bureacratic traditions that hold students back and draw lines between high and college. What we need is a seamless offering that encourages movement and ties between the base purity of high school academics and the loftier and more dynamic applications of college.

Not only should senior year be optionally spent on college courses, but so should some of junior and even sophomore year.  The level of challenge, both academic and career-tied, should always remain a few rings above the student, for optimum engagement and motivation.

Every student is different, and senior year is the ideal time to introduce more flexible systems to channel (and reward) budding maturity and academic consistency. This is a time when a child’s identity fulfillment is at it’s peak, when self-confidence and hope for future achievement can be at their height. It is not a time to hold children back with bureacratic restraints that fail to consider personal readiness for “something more.”