blocks are better than Baby Einstein

A new study from the University of Washington (Canada) shows that children 18mo-30mo who played with blocks scored significantly higher in language development. The children's parents were given a packs of plain blocks and blocks containing people and cars. They also received suggestions of things to do with them such as sorting and stacking. The parents then kept track of how often the children played with the blocks, played with other toys, and watched TV. On any given day, the study group children were more than 80% less likely to watch TV than the children in the control group. This researcher found in previous studies that TV watching in early childhood leads to language and cognitive delays as well as attention problems.

In our playroom there is a handmade wooden box (made by my father) filled with smooth, ash-colored blocks that I played with as a child. I used to love making tall towers and roads for my brother's matchbox cars. Now, my children build castles and bridges, but find that they have to do so quickly since Charlie, the 2 year old King Kong, knocks them down with amazing speed.

Part of me is glad that this study shows how much better creative play is for children than sitting like a zombie in front of the tube, but we all already knew that, didn't we? However, I don't like the implication that if we ban all electronics and only give kids blocks to play with then they are automatically going to be the smartest toddlers on the block.

I have proof, in my oldest child Will. (note that we had no TV at all and I read to him every day for hours from birth, actually even in utero) He went to (gasp!) daycare while we were stationed in Italy so I could volunteer on base for a few hours a week. The staff had all the children tested by base child development services and found that since Will didn't say more than 5 words and nothing in public at 24 months then he qualified for speech therapy. Hey, I had a newborn and the offer of someone coming to my house and playing with my toddler for an hour for free every week sounded like a pretty good deal, so I said okay. For 6 months, "Miss Karen" came over and blew bubbles, played Pooh house, and chatted with my silent little boy. The week before we packed out to come back to the States, she said, "He doesn't need any more sessions from me since he can use the word xylophone in a sentence. However, you should sign him up for services in Virginia in the school system." (I wisely passed on that suggestion)

I had done everything those child development experts said would make him talk earlier than his peers, but genetics plays a big part in language acquisition too. Will had achieved every milestone a bit later than "the books" say from getting his first tooth at 12 mo to taking his first step at 15 mo. It also turned out that both Tim and I started talking late, so why were we (okay, I) so worried about it with our child? Luckily, with his siblings I have become a lot more mellow about hitting those "should be able to do X by this age" stages and Will now has a ever-expanding vocabulary and is reading at a 5th grade+ level.

Do I think blocks are good and TV is bad for kids? Yes, but while it is nice to encourage our babies and toddlers in an academic sense, it is much more important to keep it up during the elementary years with story time and creative play. That is the time we tend to fall back and let the schools take over and many studies show that children in these grades begin to fall academically. We as a society are overly enthusiastic about teaching our infants and toddlers when their brains are mostly working on automatic pilot. However, we are much less concerned when those children are at a stage when they can actually learn information and skills. We are putting children's work and play in the wrong order. Let babies be babies and focus on academic effort with our older kids.