Ms. Rachel is Distracting Kids, Not Teaching Them (And She's Making Millions Doing It)

Not the most ethical approach, Ms. R.

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This is re-send of a piece we published in 2023, when Ms. Rachel was simply a internet juggernaut. Now she signed a blockbuster deal with Netflix and will likely reach an even larger audience and here is our argument as to why that is NOT GOOD.

Look, I’m not a nun.

I break the rules.

I swore I would go as long as humanly possible before I plopped my baby in front of a TV or tablet. I made it only to 10 months until we all got with the flu. My baby was so congested she struggled to nurse and would start wailing from frustration. I’d pump but she’d be so uncomfortable and agitated that she’d fling the bottle away.

This was her first cold. I kept giving her toys to play with, kept trying to entice her into games to improve her mood. Then I realized, I feel like doing absolutely NOTHING when I’m sick. I want to watch to the Larry Sanders Show and complain in bed. After a traumatizing incident with a nose Frida that really pissed my baby off, I decided to give my her a break and turned on the fucking Cocomelon show. My baby, my husband, and me (our heads clogged with mucus) were all stupefied by the floating colors and lulling songs.

It’s time to brush our teeth.

Yes! Yes! Yes!

I want to brush my teeth.

I resent how good looking this cartoon teacher is?

My daughter FINALLY took a bottle of pumped breast milk, snuggled in my lap, and for the next 20 mins, we all reverently basked in Netflix’s baptismal glow.

Every now and then when the day gets overwhelming or I can’t get my daughter to stop crying after a skipped nap, I’ll reach for the remote and wait for the Toothless Baby-God Coco to help distract and sooth for a few mins.

The EXACT moment I caved

I ain’t proud! But I ain’t ashamed. We were never meant to mother in isolation, with no one to hold our baby while we took care of literally anything else.

This brings us to Ms. Rachel.

Listen, if you want to put on Ms. Rachel while you make yourself breakfast and enjoy coffee, fine. If Ms. Rachel allows you 15 mins to mindlessly scroll through your feed or stalk your ex-boyfriend and make sure he’s still miserable without you, fine If Ms. Rachel allows you to sneak off to the bathroom by yourself for 10 mins, so be it.

But (vibe-killer) you should know that you’re kid isn’t learning shit. And prolonged exposure to screens may even prevent them from learning— no matter what is playing on the screen.

Small children do not acquire language from screens. Even if you co-view. Their brains are not developed enough to make the switch from 2D-3D. That feat requires 1:1 learning with a physically present human being. The science on this issue has never pointed in any other direction other than AWAY from screens.

Jerrica Sannes, an early childhood development specialist with a popular Instagram made an excellent post about all the ways children DO NOT learn from screens and how screens can add to issues around self-regulation and aggression.

Sannes writes:

“Ms. Rachel uses research-backed techniques and analytics to hold your baby’s attention while ignoring ever the growing body of research on the immediate and long-term harm of screen time for her target audience — babies. As one study put it ‘the benefits for commerce, however, seem to far outweigh what educational gains might occur for young children.’ ”

She ends with: “Your child’s loss is Rachel’s gain.”

OOooOOO!!! She’s right!! A child engaging in any sort of free play is always better for them than a screen but Ms. Rachel doesn’t make any money when your baby entertains themselves with a dry leaf (and then eats it).

Also, how do you feel about a grown woman monetizing her channel to make money on ads that play to your baby? Especially when you know those ads are actually intended towards you?

LOG OFF :(

And, look, sometimes you don’t have the ability to make your kid a healthy meal so you fire up the pizza bagels. But you wouldn’t argue that the two are equal in value, right? And you wouldn’t lose your absolute shit if someone on Insta said, “hey, pizza bagels contain an unhealthy amount of sodium and fat so be mindful about how often you serve them,” right? Well… uh, check out the firehouse of emotional dis-regulation and displacement on Sannes post. Keep in mind, there are over a 1,000 comments in this tenor:

My heart breaks for these moms who are so resource starved that they take a shoddy crutch like Ms. Rachel and canonize her for giving them 20 mins of free time in exchange for making $10 million off their kids.

So what about the overall-clad Ms. Rachel herself?

What’s her deal?

It’s not good! It’s hard to believe that she doesn’t know that the potential damages of prolonged screen time (her videos run for 50-60 mins) far outweigh whatever minor, unverifiable educational run off babies might get from her videos.

Anyone who even has a passing interest in early childhood development knows about the ignominious downfall of the Baby Einstein DVD series. The videos claimed to help your baby talk sooner and make them smarter faster. Parents went apeshit for them in the early Aughts. In 2002, it was estimated that 1 in 3 American babies under 2 years-old had been plopped in front of a Baby Einstein DVD. The company’s claims of helping children learn language faster were eventually shot down by multiple studies that showed earlier the children started started watching Baby Einstein videos the smaller their vocabulary would be. Then they got the clocks cleaned by a lawsuit. By 2009, Disney, who bought Baby Einstein for $25 million, were offering refunds to parents.

I find it hard to believe that Ms. Rachel doesn’t know that babies and toddlers do not learn language from screens. And if she actually doesn’t know, that’s just as bad. To quote Robert De Niro from Casino when he catches a slot machine grift happening under his floor manager’s watch:

My sense is Ms. Rachel is in on the grift.

Here’s a description one of her 60 min videos called ‘Baby Learning’:

Ms Rachel uses baby songs, nursery rhymes and play to show how to encourage speech and language development, cognitive skills and social emotional growth.

To show WHO ‘how to encourage speech’? Several of her videos have this sort of vague language around who she intends these videos to be for. From the above description it sounds like these are videos for parents to want to learn to coach their children on speech. But watching Ms. Rachel kick off the video in her treacly sing-song voice coaxing you to say “MAH-MAH” makes it clear she’s not trying to teach adults anything.

And it’s not as though Youtube forcefully monetizes Ms. Rachel channel and drops off a truckload of cash on her porch without her consent. This is a business, run by a grown woman, that makes money on parents being under resourced, insecure, and desperate for help.

While entrepreneurs like Ms. Rachel come as no surprise, what continues to surprise me (though it shouldn’t) is the vitriol directed at Sanners for pointing out Ms. Rachel’s grift. The panicked and wounded response always comes with the declaration of “parent shaming.” Indeed, any criticism levied against popular parenting culture is met with breathless claims of shaming, bullying, and threats of ‘reporting you’ to the Zuckerberg police.

Why people would so passionately defend the millionaires who exploit their vulnerabilities is a whole other post but it proves that we have important work to do if we want to change parenting culture. And if that’s something you’re passionate about, interested in, or simply intrigued by, go ahead and send us an email.

Anyways, back to Bluey.