Babies

This is an excellent series that looks at several aspects of infant development: bonding, growth, movement, eating and language. It introduces us to 4 babies and then shows us the research that was done to measure these areas of development. A common research question is the extent to which infants are born with the capacity for development in these areas and how parents can enhance development. It also speaks to the prenatal care that can promote development. Meeting the families keeps the studies and research conclusions from being dry. The videos and measurements sharpened the viewers' attention to what was happening and showed us how very subtle are the signs of development. Hearing the scientists' observations and conclusions while also seeing the personal lives of the babies made for the most meaningful understanding of the content.

The babies are smarter than the researchers. Seriously. They really don't tell you much more than an interested and observant parent would tell you.

I watched to see the little tykes exploring, being brilliant and very cute. That really is the only value in this series.

Adorabless is a ten. Informativeness is about a two.

How to get up to the required word count? I've said all I can on the subject.

I thought it was a bit irresponsible to put babies into and MRI machine just out of curiosity. Isn't that potentially harmful? I wouldn't agree to let them do that to my child when otherwise healthy.

The episodes don't have any point...just stating the obvious.

But the science of this documentary was meh. I think the first few episodes provided food for thought but then after that; I felt like they were "testing" traits that we already know the answer to OR the answer really has no bearing on how you raise your child. But hey lots of cute babies doing there baby things. That was enough for me.

As others have mentioned, not particularly good science. They might not want to go into the specifics of the research, but even I can see flaws in how it is conducted. Correlation vs. causation? Double-blind testing?I can't see the reputations of the researchers being helped by this.

It's also frustratingly Western oriented. The only non-Western country visited so far is Singapore, but it's all about a Western researcher working there. What about different cultures? Cambodia? Japan?

I have a professional interest in this, from a machine learning perspective, and while I wasn't expecting hard science, this is disappointing.