You think you're introducing your child to classical music, to animals, to art, to shapes and to numbers.

You use this synthesized culture to justify buying yourself a half-hour of peace.

Apparently you're buying yourself a little bit more silence, too, at least according to a study reported in the Los Angeles Times that says "Brainy Baby" and "Baby Einstein" fans age 8 to 16 months have six to eight fewer words than other kids their age.

And we thought we were joking when we called the mesmerizing videos "baby heroin."

My daughter, who loved the videos, had a lot of words at a very young age, but for a while no one could understand what they were.

She'd rattle off long, complex sentences, and we were all convinced that she was just making up words in the middle to imitate how she heard adults talking. It was very Peanuts.

I always assumed it was enunciation, not a lack of vocabulary, that made it difficult to understand what my daughter was trying to communicate — and a specialist agreed.

Now that I can understand most of what my daughter is saying, I'm stunned by how she sometimes manages to sound more like an obstinate teenager than a 4-year-old.

I'm also impressed by her ability to count in not only English, but Japanese and Mandarin as well. (Because I don't speak either of the latter two languages, I just have to assume that she knows what she's talking about.)

Not only that, she has an appreciation of Bach, Mozart and Beethoven that I didn't develop until I was an adult.

While I wouldn't recommend using the videos as the basis for a toddler's education, I can't see that it interferes with their acquisition of knowledge from other sources.

Reach Treena Shapiro at tshapiro@honoluluadvertiser.com.