My daughter gives my BlackBerry very stern "time outs". She is 2. Sadie sees me sneaking a peek at my BlackBerry while she's reading a book, playing at the park or chatting with her brother. Mostly she rolls her eyes and continues being a toddler. But sometimes, she very sternly points at my BlackBerry and says "No Blackberry. No. Time Out BlackBerry."
I had to get a new BlackBerry recently because I confess that my old one got too loved and the click-wheel stopped working. Sadie asked if she could have my old BlackBerry. She clips it to her pants, walks around with it...and my old Bluetooth headset... and "goes-a-work". Mostly she says "hello, goodbye, thanks" and laughs. I guess that shows you that I have a pretty good work life.
My son walked past me while I was on my computer and he said, "oh mum...are you tweeting AGAIN". He's 4.
I recently gave Mason a new Transformer as a reward for ditching the diapers at nighttime. The only one they had left at Zellers was a 5 year old one called Lugnut (totally cool by the way). But when I used to give Mason Transformers it meant fighting with the instructions, figuring out the feat of engineering that is a Transformer while he jumps around saysing "hurry, hurry, I want to see his robot mode". So I gave him Lugnut and sat down on the floor ready to channel my husband and figure out the thing. Mason turned it around in his hands, cocked his head to the side and started clicking (and making the Transformer noise). Click, click, click, click and about 20 seconds later it was a huge and mean-looking robot. I said "Mason...how on earth did you figure that out??!?!". He looked at me like I was a dinosaur and said "mum, I watched the toy review on YouTube a while ago". If I hadn't been sitting I would have fallen over.
I get it. I use my BlackBerry a lot. I use my computer a lot. I'm a Parenpreneur!
But sometimes I have to wonder...can they get overexposed to technology? Do most kids know about BlackBerries, Twitter and YouTube at 2 and 4? And then I realize that this is a new world order. Our kids will use technology in ways we can't even imagine, just as Mason's great grandfather would probably overhear me say "my husband tweeted me" and think it was lewd.
Gotta run...Sadie is waking up. Oh, and I'm shutting down (FULL shut down, not just closing my laptop) and heading to the park. But I will bring my BlackBerry. :)
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Our kids love the computer. My daughter is 4 and she likes the art pages where she can colour or do spin art, and she plays video games, but the older kids 6 & 9 like to use it for more advanced things.
Ethan used it to look up hockey drills to practice at home. Eleanor like to go on webkins and email people. It's amazing how easily they adapt to it.
We use it in the morning to listen to Disney radio too, and they always ask me to check the weather in th morning too!
It is a new world our children are growing up into. My husband continues to tell me that our children will look at those handles that roll down windows in some cars one day and ask "What is that for? ... Really, you had to roll down the window YOURSELF?" Sigh.....