Reap the benefits of technology with the best apps and educational games for children
As modern parents, when we worry about technology, the focus tends to be on our children’s obsession – not our own. We fail to see how our own preoccupation with smartphones and tables impacts our kids.
Kids hate to be ignored. And that is exactly what parents are doing, albeit inadvertently. Imagine all of those “Look at me! Look what I can do!” moments. When children eager to share their achievements notice their parents watching them with one eye while they have the other on a screen, they may even feel jealous of the attention that smartphone gets.
A child jealous of a smartphone? It seems crazy, but perhaps not so far fetched. Just consider the rise in children’s emergency room visits, as reported by the Daily Mail and the Wall Street Journal, among other publications. Children are winding up in the emergency room more often because parents are distracted by the digital world when full attention is called for – such as on the playground or in the bathtub.
The reason why we as parents are constantly on our devices is that the digital future is now. Tech is compelling, entertaining, and enables us to get information in a variety of formats pretty much anywhere we can get a signal. Digital literacy is essential to succeed – or even function – in our jobs and our social lives. We just need to find the right balance so that it doesn’t rule our lives, or define our parenting (Check this great post byJenny Silverstone to weight some pros and cons).
Tech is, of course, one of the most compelling and vilified aspects of modern parenting. On one nostalgia-tinged hand, we are urged to keep our children away from screens completely. Yet we know that our kids need to know how to use technology in today’s classrooms and in the world beyond school. While it may seem simpler to keep them from the dangers of screen time or computer games for kids, we risk putting them on the wrong side of the digital divide.
Yet by adapting a thoughtful, common sense approach, we can give our kids the best of both worlds. Research shows that kids learn quickly using interactive and game-based learning media. And they learn even better through joint media engagement: when parents actively participate in the game or the story with their child. Making screen time quality time enriches the experience of building digital skills with playfulness and conversation, fostering both intellectual and emotional growth. It also becomes much easier to create a natural segue to another activity, which may not be screen-based. When we get the tablet out, we might say to our child,” “Let’s read and play this story app, and then get out the crayons and draw our favorite part of the story.”
