Technology for smarter and confident kids

As a parent to a toddler, I have often found myself dogged by this question- How much technology is too much for my little girl?

When it takes me a couple of days to attune to a new game on my cellphone, it’s just a couple of hour’s business for my three years old. Children are getting cellphones earlier every generation. Laptops and iPads are toy stuff for this generation but as parents we got to worry about over-exposure and bad digital influences.

Our children treat mobile screens the way we used to treat the television. So, what’s the solution? Technology is ubiquitous. You can’t beat it. Join the band instead. It’s a reality that we as parents need to work around for our kids and find ways to make it their friend.

Technology just needs to be supervised in a careful way and it can do wonders for kids’ development. Toddlers these days are learning much faster and in a much comprehensive manner than how we used to learn.

YouTube videos and iPad apps are encouraging learning by seeing and experiencing rather than by rote memorization. I remember my friend’s son asking her why she doesn’t get him “nectarine”, a fruit he learnt about in a YouTube video, all when he was 2.5 years old.

Still, it can be a bit much. Limits are needed, after all. If there is tech-time, so should be outside play-time. Take them out more often. It could be your apartment’s kids’ area or a walk to a nearby grocery store. Let him/her experience the fun of riding a bicycle with friends or meeting dogs down the street. Buy him/her a book to experience in pages what he/she learnt from that app.

Mixing the world around your child with the technology can make them learn to explore things on their own and learn at a much faster pace which will eventually make them smarter and confident young ones in another few years.