A recent question in the forums addressed the idea of prenatal education. This would be teaching your baby while still in the womb in the hope that one day her I.Q. will be higher. The poster wanted to know if this is true, so I decided to look into it a bit.
The idea isn’t entirely new. When I was pregnant with my first baby, mothers to be were being encouraged to read to the baby. We actually did do that, but not with the idea of making her smarter. After all, she was OUR baby. She would already be perfect. We wanted her to hear our voices and the rhythm of the written word.
Around this time, the Mozart Effect was taking hold in the American media. This idea was based on a study of college students that showed the kids scored better on certain tests after listening to Mozart for ten minutes. This study was published in the mainstream media and the idea that babies could be made smarter spread like wildfire.
Parents and parents to be flocked to stores to buy Baby Mozart CDs and played them endlessly for their infants. Later studies showed that this really doesn’t improve a child’s I.Q. Although exposure to classical music can’t hurt and does have some benefits, it won’t make your baby a prodigy.
The idea of educating fetuses has been taken to a whole new level. There are now prenatal education systems that are marketed to new parents. These audio lessons are delivered via an audio speaker worn around the waist on a belt.
The advertising for these systems claim that the baby will have a better attention span, a higher degree of school readiness, cry less and sleep better. After reading the literature provided by the companies, you wonder if your baby needs this system. Are you depriving her of critical early learning by not educating her now?
There is some evidence to suggest that learning does begin in the womb. A 1998 study on prenatal language learning that was published in the Journal of Prenatal & Perinatal Psychology & Health showed that fetuses are learning in the womb.
However, you don’t need to spend a fortune on a home based prenatal education program to get these benefits. The babies are learning from listening to the voices of their mothers. The baby can hear your voice quite clearly in the last trimester. By listening to the rhythm, tones and patterns of his mother’s voice, the baby is getting a head start on human communication.
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