Be Excellent To Each Other

My son turned one a couple of weeks ago. He is not walking yet, but he understands the word Xbox when I say it, this is due to the amount of Skype usage the Xbox One gets when we call our respective parents I do everything via the voice control.

He is also very switched on with the Harmony remote, he has always likes to chew it from a young age, but over the last 3 months he has started to focus on the macro buttons and gets a fair amount of success as one button will turn on everything required to say use the XBMC.

Recently he has recognized the specific button on the remote for the Xbox One as I downloaded icons for each activity, he gets very excited when it gets turned on and appears very happy if he feels his efforts have contributed!
He also worked out the button to press on controllers to turn consoles on, again he is very proud when he does this and also vocal if say the TV is not on as well.

I get the same recognition with the IPad and the apps he likes.

My wife is going nuts saying it’s bad for him, he gets maybe 5 minutes of TV\ remote every couple of days. He will however make a move for these things every night if I’m around!

I’m quite pleased with how fast he is learning, I have no intention of dumping in front of any technology for hours at a time, but feel it’s important he learns to use things. My wife counters that he should be putting his efforts into putting shapes like stars in star shaped holes on some of his toys.

Wondered what the thoughts on this were among you all?

Well, I don't have kids, and while stuff like putting blocks through the correct holes and stuff is probably useful for cognition and dexterity, I would argue that learning to recognise the button and function of a thing is also pretty useful.

So like you say, as long as you're doing both, I can't see this doing any harm. Regardless of what you do, his life will be surrounded by technology so a very early introduction to it seems sensible. You might just have to ensure you do proactive outdoor things with him too as he gets older, so that he doesn't spend his life at home mastering gadgets and technology.

Yeah, I think it's probably great for them as long as it isn't excessive but I can imagine that the interactivity on offer could easily take over if it isn't kept in check. I can't see any reason to make the blanket statement that it's bad for them, though.

I've always found the boy seems to self regulate his phone/ipad usage. Having similarly played with them from an early age, I think he now prefers to play with physical stuff and use his imagination, so it is very rare for us to turn the TV off, or take the phone off him as he is using/watching them too much. An exception would be yesterday, when he was half watching Toy Story and half mindlessly pressing letters on an alphabet recognition game, and I took the phone off him as he wasn't playing with it 'properly' and don't want him to feel the need to fiddle with an iphone.

We've always been relaxed (and mildly amazed) by how quickly he gets how apps work etc, but they've always been there for him. Similarly, my parents do.

My in-laws, however, hate 'tech' being used in company, and especially by the boy (even if my father in law will sit ignoring the room for an hour playing candy crush since he got an ipad for christmas), so at some points (guess which), I positively encourage it.

I don't have much of an informed opinion because I don't know shit about kids but I remembered that one of the Penny Arcade guys was talking about this kind of thing (albeit with much older kids) the other day:

http://www.penny-arcade.com/news/post/2 ... creen-time

The related comic is here:

http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2014/06/30

That's the Grimlet, aged 2 (and 2 days).

Clearly his lexicon included "birds" and "Sam" (which he pronounces "Samus").

In answer to the question, both are important - although you could argue that while both teach dexterity and hand to eye coordination, only one of them teaches cause and effect, so pressing buttons is better

Watching TV and playing with remotes certainly won't do him any harm.

Recognising iconography and associating meaning is language. Any arguments, point out famously-behind-the-curve amcient Egyptians.

I am totes leaving that typo in.

Megan (Shorts) is 8 now and her grasp of technology never fails to amaze me.

As a totally bona fide nerd I have encouraged her use of technology from an early age and she absorbs everything in a way that I just can't these days. Watching her on Minecraft at the weekend she hadn't played the PC version before but took to the control system without the slightest bump in the road.

We went swimming on Sunday and even then we're playing Minecraft in the pool and I'm her horse and she's asking me if I want a normal or an enchanted carrot after I stupidly asked for an apple. So all of these feed her imagination as well as her general technology / IT skills.

Of course nothing is quite as entertaining/educational as a cheese grater;

Ironically, no trousers

Zioette amazes me with how well she grasps technology. She turned 5 at the end of May, but long before that she's been asking to borrow my phone so she can watch YouTube on it whenever we're going out anywhere in the car. I gave her my old iPad 1 earlier in the year and have decided to start getting her in front of my computer on the weekends she stays over so she can learn how to use one.

Yup MiniKov is the same. The Ipad is great for journeys, he plays games and watches films.

He know his way round an xbox for playing films or lego games

I think people often idealise their own childhoods which didn't include things like iPads and stuff. People are wary of anything new, much the same as I recall a distinct feeling from my parents that watching telly was going to do us harm. But then maybe it did, who knows.

I was using a commodore plus 4 at 6 years old. These kids, eh? Don't know they're born

My Dad brought home a BBC Micro when I was 5 and that was my first experience of a computer. He'd bought it for himself, but it didn't take long before it was living in my bedroom and it was pretty much just me using it. I do have fond memories of myself and my Dad competing for high scores on Swoop, a pretty decent Galaxian clone.

Anyway, it was that which made me realise that now Zioette has turned 5, it's probably past time I started getting her to use a computer. It's not like they're going anywhere and IT literacy at a young age can surely only be a good thing.

My first home computer was a Texas TI-99 4A. I think I was around 7? Probably started copying BASIC programs out of a magazine (and we had a book of them, I think) when I was eight.

And look how you turned out, what a wasted childhood, computers will never catch on.

Started using (and very basic programming) on a Speccy 48K when I was nearly 6. Didn't really have a clue what I was doing programming wise (no change there then, hurr-hurr) but I caught the bug.

I remember getting a colossal, massive, humiliating bollocking in my final year of Junior school (what the young whippersnappers of today would call Year 6) for copying BASIC code out of a book in the school library when I was meant to be in there researching a project. I still hold that teacher personally responsible for me not being a massively wealthy and successful software engineer (and not my tenuous grasp on even the most basic principals of mathematics).

On a serious note, and this just occured to me: On long car journeys as a kid, my mum gave me lots of books to read. I read them endlessly and had what was apparently a very high language/reading age, probably because I spent quite a lot of time buried in books for want of any other entertainment.

It strikes me that sticking an iPad in front of a kid for such things isn't going to be quite as useful. They'll be really good at using apple products, but how much vocabulary/language exposure do they get doing that? Books force you to visualise and capitalise imagination to make the story real, whereas if you're watching a film you're merely a passive observer.

I also used to copy huge swathes of BASIC out of the back of manuals. This probably made me a very early touch-typist. Even when I was in college being able to type without looking at the keys was rare enough for it to be remarked upon by my Computing tutor, who couldn't do it himself.

Depends on what they do on the iPad, of course. The Grimlet learnt to write on one, for instance.

I'm not going to pretend there weren't hour-long marathons of Peppa Pig, though.

Also on long car journeys I used to look out the window, argue with my siblings or fall asleep. So it depends what they would be doing instead.

The last time I visited my niece there was much Peppa Pigging. I quite liked it. My niece liked my pig impressions, so I was all over that rare acclaim.

Katie is 4
We just limit screen time and and screen time includes all of it: tv, tablet, pc, WiiU
she can use all of those, but the total shouldn't be too much and we encourage her to play with toys, fantasy play, books, play outside etc
because if we left it all up to her she would not really find a balance (yet?)
But she gets quite a bit of screen time all-in-all

The car is a difficult thing because she is not old enough yet to read, but "in my time" we could play in the back seats doing whatever but she's strapped into a car seat in such a limiting way. And we drive to the uk and back and also sometimes to Bosnia and so on those sorts of journeys we just let her watch dvd's as much as she wants. We even measure time in "Frozens" as in my mother lives 1 Frozen away but Steves parents live 4 Frozens away

I have an 360 upstairs that's hidden in a TV cabinet, my son found the controller and is now understanding that the X button turns on the console on. I've had this thing re soldered and installed extra fans so its noisy

It fires up and he is all over it, making noises and now pointing at the TV as he understands there is something else that needs to happen!

He then sits with the controller and looks to be getting annoyed as I guess he has expectations of what should be going on but hasn't mastered the controller.

Now he will push away from me in the bedroom to move me to the direction of the 360 then gets very excited when we get close to it. He is like this at various points around the house now, mostly the Lounge, my PC room and the washing machine!!

If I take him away from any of these things he grumbles for 10 seconds but then is happy with some toys , on first glance I was worried as he gets so excited he tenses his whole body, but he does this with a tube of nappy rash cream that he likes to hold when I change him so I guess this is more character than anything else.

I'm finding him a bit lazy when it comes to walking and standing, he much prefers to be carried by me. When he was smaller he had reflux and was always in pain in the pram etc, so I carried him a lot for this reason and the fact he loves to see the world around him. When I see the application he puts into gadgets its comforting in some ways as I know I just have to get him to apply himself with walking.

Its all about balance, I picked him up at 4pm yesterday and after his dinner we played on his toys in the garden for 2 hours, the only technology was 2 plays of Incy Wincey Spider on Youtube!

Have you tried him with a smartphone or tablet?

Toddler Lock is a good game for Android, as it disables all the buttons and you can't exit unless you touch all four screen corners in sequence. I still have it on my phone to amuse young-uns*.

[edit]Oh, it seems to have had adverts inserted. That's a shame.

*Insert Yewtree joke here

My son has started to pull himself up and stand a lot more now, he has developed a big interest in the draws on our TV cabinet which are full of old remotes and console controllers.

Last night he pulled out the bit of paper I got with a QR code on for FIFA 2014 for the Xbox One. He pointed to the Xbox logo on the top and then pointed at the TV, then looked at me as if to see "get it turned on then!"

Noticed that my wife can keep him amused for hours in the living room with baby toys, but as soon as come into the room he starts pointing at the TV or remotes!