Introducing technology to your kids?

[Sammy Boy]

Hi there, I know there are probably some members here who are parents.

Wondering if you could share any tips / strategies on how you manage (or don't manage) your children's exposure to technology?

As a parent, how soon do you decide to introduce your child to technology, and how much?

I work in IT, so I kind of know it would be very hard not to introduce any technology to my daughter, but I am conscious of how I was brought up by my father (mechanical engineering background).

Basically he did not allow me to use a calculator until I could do decimal long division, differentiation and integration manually.

"Because you will not always have technology to rely on, son." - he would say (which I think is helpful to keep in mind)

I kind of want to limit my daughter's exposure to technology so she doesn't start playing with smartphones by two, and instead get her to develop her old-fashioned writing and drawing skills.

Please feel free to share your thoughts with me - I am trying to keep an open mind... Thanks.

[TWWK]

There's certainly an interesting line to walk - you want your kids to be familiar with technology since it so permeates EVERYTHING, but you don't want them to become tech junkies at the expense of developing other areas of their life.

With my kids, we're taking it slow. For instance, we don't sit them in front of the TV too much, and generally they watch educational shows (at their ages - 4 and 3 - they like them as much as non-educational shows anyway). As for iPhone apps and video games, we limit their exposure. They may play on my iPhone for a couple of minutes each week, and they haven't yet played my gaming consoles (not that I play often myself). My kids do have a "Leapster," which is a handheld console containing "games" to develop their fine motor skills and to learn their letters, numbers, shapes, etc.

I'm eager to hear what others are doing as well. Anyone else want to share?

[Atria35]

I think the major challenge would be limiting them at other people's houses. You can always have some control in your own (though the way kids get into things, rather impossible to keep them from grabbing your smartphone a few times), but at other people's houses? Noway.

Even though all my other friends had gaming consoles, and we did occasionally play them when I was over, my parents never had one in the house. They were religious about my brother and me playing at parks and in the backyard, and always had plenty of board games and crayons and a tea set on hand for when I had friends over.

I had tons of tv exposure because of my father's inability to watch or limit it (he was a stay-at-home dad but he also had a stroke well before I was born, and it was simply not mentally or phsycially possible for him to realize that I shouldn't be watching all the time or physically enforce it from his paralyzation) but because we were out of the house so much, I was usually keyed up and wanted to play with my wooden blocks or train set instead - physical stuff on top of the physical stuff. And crayons and markers and paper were always available. Tons of it.

As far as writing skills, a lot of schools put pressure on kindergarteners to be able to read and write and don't teach it in first grade. This is a problem. Kids simply do NOT have the physical motor skills to write well or properly before then, which means there's an entire generation coming out with chickenscribble because people insist on pushing physical abilities faster. It's good to practice on occasion, but seriously teaching handwriting should happen in first grade. And it's highly unlikely that their teachers will do it - it's been cut from a lot of school's curriculums.

[Mr. SmartyPants]

Basically he did not allow me to use a calculator until I could do decimal long division, differentiation and integration manually.

Oh god...

Flashbacks of my mother...