Are Gadgets as Bad as We Think for our Kids?

Before I gave birth, I promised myself that I will not let my child play with gadgets of any kind until he was older. Well, if you become a parent, and when your child starts to explore, you will definitely find it hard not to let him play with you iPad and other gadgets. Children nowadays (as young as a year and a half) would be able to explore your gadget and you'd be surprised that he already knows how to look for YouTube and exit applications from your phone. 

We tried to delay my son in playing with iPad, but there are just these instances when he is too fuzzy and nothing (aside from watching his Elmo show) could stop him from crying. At a year and 7 months, we decided to give him access to our iPad but of course, under our supervision and with limited use. 

Aside from attending Kindermusik classes during Saturdays, there's really not much activity that we do at home aside from playing, reading simple books and watching Sesame Street and other learning shows in YouTube. 

ABC Elmo that we have installed in our iPad

While we were eating breakfast last week though, I noticed that he was staring at the clock and started pronouncing the numbers that he could see. To tell you the truth, I never taught him to count and I'm pretty sure he got it from one of his iPad videos. At 1.9 months, I think he did well to be able to recognize and count from 1-10. 

Im not saying that we should allow our children to play and use iPads early, but with proper guidance, these gadgets do help is in our child's learning. 

Here is a few things we do when we let our son access iPad. 

1. No gadgets during meals - this includes us adults as well. To be fair, we always make sure that we don't use gadgets too so we are able to bond and socialize during this time.
2. iPad as a learning tool - we make sure that the contents of the iPad are for learning and not for playing games.
3. No iPads when we go out - we only use it at home and we make sure that whenever we go out, he is able to explore the places that we go to and interact with people we meet. This also holds true when we go on vacations, we make sure sure that we get to bond with each other and not with our gadgets.
4. Parents should set good examples - this is the most effective way to teach our children in every single aspect. We should not set double-standards and not make yourself an exception when it comes to teaching our children.

Share with us how you deal with your children and their gadgets, we would love to learn from you.

Lanna
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