Dear "Researchers:"

Stop it.

Stop releasing your so-called findings just to make headlines. Stop conducting studies that are flawed from the get-go. Stop making us all fret and feel guilty over nothing.

I saw your Baby Einstein study this morning--the one that says kids who watched the popular videos ended up with language delays. Yuh huh. You failed to mention whether the kids in your study also watched television more than the one hour of Baby Einstein a day you required. Or whether they were in group care settings, at home with a parent or sitter, in underprivileged neighborhoods, or anything else.

Here's the thing: A child who is left in front of a television (or radio or computer or cardboard box) is probably going to have language delays if (and only if) that watching comes at the expense of interactive time with a caregiver. If the child would either be doing that OR participating in games or book-reading or other verbal exchanges with an adult, then yes. I can see where there'd be a delay.

Most babies I know watched Baby Einstein while Mom got a shower. Way to make us all feel guilty about that, you know? Yay you! You got your names in the newspaper, you cool scientists! You wacky Ph.D.s! Aren't you smart??

I suspect you've teamed up with the evil "What to Expect" authors. You did, didn't you? Spreaders of misery and perpetrators of random guilt and fear among young parents.

By leaving out extenuating circumstances, you skewed the study. I suspect that had you studied kids who watched some Baby Einstein and were otherwise being held and talked to and read to and sung to during their waking hours, you would have found no difference between them and their no-TV counterparts (a.k.a. "freaks").

Until you can present all the relevant information and give us the results from a 100 percent fair study, do us all a favor. Shut up. We have enough guilt without you.

Love,

Kim (whose kids both watched Baby E. during infancy while she --gasp--showered, and whose kids both talked by 9 months old despite it...)