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Children and Technology
There is a refreshingly level-headed piece in the N.Y. Times today about kids and technology. The question of when it is appropriate to introduce certain gizmos to your child is now a basic parenting issue that simply did not exist twenty years ago. Author Warren Buckleitner did his homework and consults the literature on child development. While he focuses exclusively on the concepts of Piaget, he successfully conveys the notion that cognitive development proceeds in stages which must be allowed to play out if an individual is to achieve anything like her or his full potential. Infants and toddlers, for instance, do just about all their learning through their senses and their bodies. They need to push, pull, grasp and poke. They need to put things in their mouths (that's the most sensitive place; you get more information that way. It's not all about whether something's edible.). Most electronic or digital gadgetry is pretty useless at this juncture. Three and four-year-olds love to pretend to talk on telephones, just as they pretend to use other tools grownups use, but they're not likely to do much more with a functioning telephone than pretend just the way they do with their toys. Many technologies will be useless to children before they're ready for them.
There are of course electronic and computer-based devices designed and marketed for children in different age ranges. Toys with buttons to push and wheels to turn that also make recorded sounds have their place, and I know my nephew has has done some solid early reading work by playing games on his Leapster. But such things are no substitute for tapping a bell and hearing it ring, or spinning a top with one's own fingers, or finding out how high a structure one can build with simple blocks. A child's play constitutes a vital set of physics/social science/biology experiments, and they need to experience the mechanical and living world directly. We live with all manner of technology around us, and children should certainly be exposed to those realities, but it's more important for them to know about earth, sky, water, sun, leaves, bugs, and friends.
As with most of these ideas, this applies to adults every bit as much as to children.
So turn the damn thing off, whatever it is. It'll be there when you come back.
There are of course electronic and computer-based devices designed and marketed for children in different age ranges. Toys with buttons to push and wheels to turn that also make recorded sounds have their place, and I know my nephew has has done some solid early reading work by playing games on his Leapster. But such things are no substitute for tapping a bell and hearing it ring, or spinning a top with one's own fingers, or finding out how high a structure one can build with simple blocks. A child's play constitutes a vital set of physics/social science/biology experiments, and they need to experience the mechanical and living world directly. We live with all manner of technology around us, and children should certainly be exposed to those realities, but it's more important for them to know about earth, sky, water, sun, leaves, bugs, and friends.
As with most of these ideas, this applies to adults every bit as much as to children.
So turn the damn thing off, whatever it is. It'll be there when you come back.
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