TV is the Devil... and so are Some Children

On my registry blog, I have a page dedicated to stuff that people should, under no circumstances, buy me. Included are stupid outfits, fluffy blankets, and Baby Einstein videos. The reason I don't want Baby Einstein videos, I explained, is because letting babies watch "educational" TV encourages lazy parenting, and those videos have never actually been shown to do any real educating.

Now, I've received flak about this request (or anti-request, if you will). People will say, "I let my baby watch Baby Einstein and nothing bad happened blah blah blah." And I say, "Well, he's only 3. Give it a couple years. I bet you'll eventually have him on Ritalin for having ADD or some other bullshit attention disorder."

(That's right, I think 99.9% of diagnosed ADD is bullshit.)

Today, however, I stumbled across an article that proved me right, and as we all know, I love being right. Disney (the company that owns Baby Einstein) if offering a refund for Baby Einstein videos that did not turn babies into geniuses - which would be all of them, really. They apologize for marketing the videos as "educational" when there was no research done to determine whether they actually were or not (emphasis on not). This made me happy, because my exclusion of Baby Einstein videos is now justified!

Then, I read this article, and my jubilation was taken away. This one says that, essentially, some kids are just born assholes, and the best parenting in the world won't be able to turn them into nice people. I've been worried about various things during this pregnancy - mostly things that are up to fate and that I have no control over, like cystic fibrosis - but I've been pretty sure that at least our kid is going to grow up a decent human being with manners and shit, because Jake and I are both polite, socially-conscious, intelligent people (who sometimes fart on each other).

But now, I have to worry about being one of those parents who just happened to bear a total twatface of a human being. Great! I guess I should be flexing my worry muscle, though, right? It will be getting used enough for the next 18+ years; I wouldn't want to pull it!