computers strain vision, what effect will this have on the little ones eyes?�
future hoards of myopics?

i wonder what happens to children who don’t have access to these technologies? isn’t that a more important question? i can only think this is an advantage and some will not have it…..

Put the kids in front of screens at an earlier and earlier age, then we can do more shows about obesity in our young. Also, as someone who works with troubled youth, I will have more kids to turn on to the wonder of nature, to physical activity . . . for the first time.

Are they indeed Lab Rats?

A study not too long ago linked the important role of play between children in development and in particular socialization and how the lack of if was always found in serial killers.

What kind of handicap will parents be burdening their children with jacking them into skynet?

It’ll be funny to see one of these toddlers in the future trying to touch every screen they see when they get older….ouch…gonna pickup a lot of colds.

This is one of our favorite BOOKS Tom, cracks us up. This girl delivers it well, watch it, you will laugh. It is called, “It’s a Book.”�
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MJUcuu-fl0c

The job of parents has changed over time.  It used to be that the parent taught the child whatever trade the parent had.  Then came child labor in factories.  Next was the modern idea of a sacred childhood.  Now we absorb our young into the collective.  Nu?

It seems to me a child sitting in a car for hours on end used to sing songs with the parents or sit and count cows.  The idea a child can manage an IPad during those times is a big boost.  If it works right, the parent will know what the child is watching, and just as a child will recite a story while a parent reads it — both know it by heart — with an IPad, the parent will recite as the child see it, also because of knowing it by heart.

Our daughter turns 2 in July. My husband and I watch minimal TV, use our computer strictly as a tool, and tend to be basically more “old-fashioned” in our style of living. Several friends have given her Leap Frog type gadgets, a musical activity table, etc. She gets bored with most of these electronic items. She will go for her blocks, stacking buckets, books or puzzles before these other items, and often she doesn’t even show an interest in those electronic items to begin with.

I think she will be exposed to technology soon enough. For now, we want her to focus on spatial relationships, cause and effect, developing her imagination and learning to entertain herself, rather than pushing buttons, swiping iPads, watching videos in the car or BEING entertained. I think too many parents use their electronica as baby sitters and feel they are “educating” their children without having to put in much effort or interaction themselves.

If a child is watching something that the parent can participate in too, not a “shut-up” toy, then it has to have enough heft that it merits revisiting by both child and parent/adult.
    We know about children’s books, how it may take a year to develop the words and plot and images that grab both parent and child over and over and over.  Right now, it doesn’t seem anyone is interested in that sort of thing, the statuary of I-apps, the permanent and memorable pieces.  Right?

There are advantages of the I devices. There are no discs to lose or scratch, they can help keep a child entertained at a doctors office and not worry about the shots that will soon come at the end of the visit. Also there are no commercials!

I am a parent of a 1 year old and a 3 year old. I feel these are very helpful parenting tools, when used in moderation. We use a I-Pod touch with both our children probably for a cumulative hour a week. They aren’t too savy with it, but it enables us to change the toddlers diaper really quickly and helped potty train our daughter by letting her play with it as she sat and waited. However, I have seen them abused and used too often. I agree children should learn how to learn and how to use thier imagination at this point in time, but sometimes you need to take advantage of what is availble to you in a pinch as well.

I’m pretty sure a parent could read to a child off an I-pad just the way an adult can read to him or herself off a Kindle or Nook. It’s cheaper than buying the book.  Last I looked, it was a dollar per book on App.

can one of the guests duscuss the Nature Deficit psrt of kidd on all technology, paul b. e. greenwich ri.?

IT seems to me that ironically adults like me use media to open doors and expand horizons where we cannot otherwise reach, but from the way the conversation is going, the value of art and media to children is that it focuses, it limits; it zeroes in on this or that.  A parent reading to a child is putting a cocoon around that adult and that child, and a kind of centerpiece, the book, but it could be something else.
    An Ipad for a child could, as we hear, deprive of that expanding universe which the child can reach, with all its hugeness and perplexities, by turning AWAY from the Ipad.  It is an interesting paradox.  

It’s important for children to sometimes be bored – that’s the time when they learn to create their own fun

Multitasking doesn’t exist, per Steyer. I’ve been using the word “microswitching” for a few years.

Ask anyone who rides a motorcycle (real, not virtual) how quickly they have to shift attention among small, important things. (For that matter, anyone who flies an airplane or helicopter.)

In my past life of a pre-school 3 and 4 year old teacher, comparing then with now. In 1994 we would welcome students in class with computers, but their time would be scheduled and limited. The digital tools will be important for future growth paired with real life learning. A process I personal developed for my students was to partner learning with as many tools as possible, such as being introduced to physical cut out letters and numbers, and at other times of the day called to interact with digital letters and numbers. Parents, and well as the principal would accelerated learning results. Part of my practice was to contact parents and have them participate in the learning process at home with the child, which caused more child to parent communication strengthening family ties and childhood intellectual growth.

Nobody is thinking of something that gravitates intergenerational minds like Make Way for the Ducklings, something that becomes a shared tool for growth.  I know there is a different kind of writing for things that have one screen at a time, or where you could use multiple directions from any page.  But where are the geniuses who are coming up with must-see literature?  Where is the Babar of the i-phone, the author, the agent, the publisher?

My problem with computer learning is the “instant gratification” addiction it enables, and I admit I have noticed how fast I get hooked on it while using educational apps. What will you do when there is no feedback on whether you are right or wrong? How will you have the patience and attention span to work through long problems? Despite the benefits I do find in the apps, you are setting yourself up for impatience, whininess, and frustration!

My son, 18 now and graduating this year, goes to a Waldorf school where most technology is avoided until it is considered age appropriate, around high school age.  He had almost no access to a computer, TV or video games until high school age and no face book until he was a sophomore.  I can report that he is absolutely proficient in the use of computers and technology, certainly as proficient as his peers who started much, much earlier.  He never had standardized testing in school and blew his SAT’s out of the water (first time), was accepted w/ significant scholarship into each of the colleges to which he applied.  He is also a brilliant artist and musician.  I think this attests to the fact that kids can go without technology for a good long time without being set back in any way!  

Does anyone remember Baby Einstein? It was a highly lucrative consumer product that was marketed and fraudulently labeled “educational”. People used it as an electronic babysitter. All of the same objections against Baby Einstein seem to apply to the IPad in outside-of-school settings where parents don’t limit the screen time.

Tom, we’re missing the bigger picture.  The iPad is not a problem.  A lack of physical exercise to accompany the iPad would be a problem.  The brain needs both to learn effectively.

What about affects of these devices on the eye? I recently used my iPad extensively while recovering from surgery andnoticed significant changes in my vision (negative images etc). I am concerned that the ypung develoin retina would be very vulnerable.

Good morning,
I’m an RN in a pediatrician’s office and am appalled at the use of devices as “shut up toys”.  Many kids- of all ages- are not learning the ability to wait, or the ability to communicate.  Parents are not setting good examples, either, as they are sitting right beside their child using a device as well.  The kids often don’t make eye contact, don’t answer direct,simple questions that I ask  and are not communicating w/their parent.  They seem unaware of the situtation they are in and how to behave.

wow, that last comment summed it up for me.  Child psychiatrists I know echo the notion of an explosion of child insecurity and an inability of many young children to self-sooth and self-regulate themselves.  The socio-emotional competencies of many young children are lacking; this is a function of not just parenting, but our culture, our country and our post-911 world.

I say no screen time of any kind at least until kids are 3 or 4.  I have 3 boys and we did not have TV and we never got video games until my oldest bought his own system at age 18.
Kids need interaction with people and with the world around.  I recommend lego blocks, puzzles, board games, visits to farms, museums, concerts, and above all books, books and books and physical activities (visits to the playground on a daily basis, the woods, playing with dirt, snow, sand).
I find TV horrible ( even some public TV programs).  So much advertising and programs of very poor quality and value. �
Kids will catch up with their peers with Hi Tech in no time and they will have had the benefit of self-discovery, critical thinking and not passive sitting in front of screens.
I am not a luddite.  Computers are useful tools and can help kids expand their universe but do it much later in life.  

Would these people cut it out with talking about how parents are bad because they offer so-called “shut up” toys?  Who do they think taught parents to provide diversions to their toddlers??  It wasn’t grandma or your friend next door, it was the freaking child psychologists!  Enough of these people with a product to sell via a pseudo-book tour!

Tom, you posed a rhetorical question early in the program: what is the difference
between a child learning to read from an ipad vs. learning from a book?

The critical
difference is that the baby with the book is
on his parent’s lap, experiencing intimate human contact –  and the young child with the
book is alone, experiencing stillness, self-reflection and the wonderful world of imagination.

Plugging kids in benefits ONLY the parents who need a break.

But there are other ways to get that break .. let them play
outside, build a blanket fort, play music, read books, draw
at the kitchen table, make a creative mess OR perhaps most importantly, be bored.  Bored is OK – even good sometimes!

To the parents who worry about their children competing with the’plugged
in’ Hyper-learners?  Don’t.

I
have four children aged 12-18.  We
live in an upper middle class, very competitive CT community, and we raised our
children with no electronics (including TV) until they could read.  They are normal, well-adjusted kids who enjoy school, sports, music, etc. and perform (academically) very well relative to their peers.  My oldest son, summed it up best in his college essay about growing up unplugged: “Because I wasn’t tethered to a cord or a keyboard, I was free to climb higher, go lower and develop a perspective shaped by nature and people, not marketers.”  

Santa gave my 8 year old son’s friend an iPad for Christmas.  I told him “Santa doesn’t give kids what their parents don’t want them to have” when he asked me why he didn’t get one.  We are not “poor” but we can’t afford one.   We parents have to deal with inequity on so many issues but this one had me thinking of the way education is linked up with technology.  The economic divide in this county is getting bigger and bigger; it scares me that the technology you have (or haven’t got) can push poor children even further off the map.

The caller’s comments about children learning patience reminded me of a poem (and the notes following) that I wrote in 1983 when I was thinking about my children learning to wait, self-control and uses of the imagination.  http://tinyurl.com/LrntoWait

I am paraphrasing from memory , from an older book by Ray Kurzweil, he has written that a one inch cube of carbon nano tubes has more computing power potential than 100 million human minds. I am quite convinced that someday we will all want and have a similar computing device(s) implanted in our brains, as will our children. Today’s children are the proto humans of tomorrow !

Every time On Point covers a tech topic, the end result is that the tech topic will destroy humanity!!!

Humans are amazingly adaptive. Don’t think every new tech will destroy humanity. It takes time to adapt. 

I’m a week or two away from my first baby girl and fully expect her to learn with books, iPads, iPhones, and stuffed animals. It’s not a zero sum game.

That video of the baby interacting with the magazine like it’s an ipad makes me feel literally sick to my stomach.