June, Leo, Quincy and Annie

Ugh. Maybe I should watch less Disney Channel. 'Cept I think the commercials are on all the channels. And I don't really watch Disney at all. But apparently there's some DVD called like Baby Einsteins, and the commercials for it drive me up the wall with annoyance and frustration. It's these four little cute cartoon kids. One likes to conduct, one likes to dance, one likes to sing, and one likes instruments. At the end of the commercial, the happy woman selling the dvd asks, "which baby einstein is YOUR child?"

I want to pull an elvis and shoot the screen out with a gun. Listen to me: not all children are geniuses. Not all geniuses are gifted in musical areas. Not all gifted people have such a focused strength in just one area. But really. Come on, people. Get over yourselves. Letting the TV babysit your kid isn't really the best way to nurture a young child, gifted or not. As Ian Holm's character in Chariots of Fire puts it, "you can't put in what God's left out." People expect children to become magically smarter if they listen to mozart. But there is WAY more that goes into a child's brain development than that. Music may stimulate the mind for a short period of time, but you can't play one song to a kid and then expect them to ace a history exam, or understand calculus. Learning takes work, folks, no matter whether you're Cameron Diaz or Albert Einstein or Joe Schmo. If you want to be smart, go out and study something. Be all that YOU can be, not all that someone else is (or was).