On a recent trip to my family doctor’s office – a waiting room rife with children of all ages – I saw a little girl in the neighborhood of three years old, happily being read to by her mom. Off of a computer tablet. I wanted to jump up and cheer. As parents, we are constantly being barraged by techno-phobes telling us that technology will stunt our kids’ intellectual growth, ruin their attention spans, and leave them with no social skills. This is just silly, of course. The mom in question was reading her toddler a book – just as “good parents” have been doing for centuries. The difference was that, instead of a big bag of books that she would have had to lug around with her, she had a small, lightweight tablet that held dozens of books, keeping her child engaged and quiet in an otherwise boring waiting room.
My daughters are 15 and 12, so when they were little, we did not have a tablet or a smart phone. We did have a desktop computer, which they loved to play with and I let them, against the advice of all the “experts.” Their favorite thing to do was to carefully type their names and the names of everyone they knew in a Microsoft Word document, asking me the spelling letter by careful letter. And then they would use the formatting bar to change the font and the color of the letters. Parenting magazines warn that screen time gives kids short attention spans, but I was impressed by their dedicated focus to such careful word processing.
At the time, my only agenda was to let them play with something that interested them. But the unintended benefits were great. As the years went by, their computer skills grew with seemingly no effort. We did get a tablet, and smart phones, and they intuitively understood how to use them. They were never afraid or impatient to try and figure out how to do something with technology – I am the one who gets frustrated and asks them for help. And their comfort with technology is a marvelous thing, because the older they get, the more they need to use technology to succeed in school. In both middle and high school they do assignments online regularly, and most of their essays must be turned in digitally. Even their state standardized testing was done on computers this year.
Back when they were little and now that they’re teens, I do insist that they don’t spend unreasonable amounts of time in screens. And, of course, they played with many things when they were little – not just the computer. We blew bubbles and rode tricycles, did art projects and made mud pies. They played with big dolls and tiny dolls and Legos and trains. I read huge stacks of books to them. Which brings me back to the lady in the waiting room. What a pleasure it must be to have countless picture books and interactive books on a device that weighs less than two pounds!
I’m sure that mom knows the truth about technology. It does not replace books or the myriad other activities children do every day. But it is a huge and growing part of our daily lives, and it can add joy and value in a healthy, happy, well-rounded childhood.
