what ppl defending kids on ipads don’t seem to understand is that there are other ways to keep kids occupied. my mom had a whole bag full of little toys and games for me to play with while waiting in lines at disney world. once your kid is like 7 or 8 they can read a book. they can color. or they can literally just sit there and imagine things. i did that a lot as a kid.
thanks for putting your wrong and bad commentary in the tags where i still have to read all of it. most of what you said is untrue.
OP: giving children too young to process things so much access to ipads isn’t good for them maybe.
People in the notes: So you hate moms??? You’re ableist?? You think we should go back to the Dark Ages?? (My personal favorite because it makes no sense) you’re poor shaming??
Why is it so difficult to explain that children not developing fine motor skills and losing their attention spans is bad actually??
also children can end up being entertained by just about anything. I remember building "bird nests" with sticks in the backyard when I was like 7 years old. That was it. It took up my whole afternoon and I was entertained the entire time.
I worked at a kindergarten for a year, and Jesus Christ these kids are falling behind on so many milestones
Everyone knows who the iPad kids are
I've seen it all from kids who don't know how to use scissors, and can't perform the motions right compared to other kids in that age group, to kids who can't write the alphabet or spell their names (the older ones)
And one of the most startling thing I encountered was every now and then we have a country day, where we choose a country, color in the country's flag in the colors and watch a little film about said country.
And I was overseeing the coloring, and one boy just refusing to color
It happens, stubbornness, bad days, 'just don't wanna' s happen, but I sit with him and continue to try and encourage him and figure out why he doesn't want to
And he keeps saying he doesn't know how to color
And I'm like ??? Just pick up the pencil and put it on the paper buddy, cmon
So I'm showing him how, and he refuses to try over and over
So then I try like, coloring while guiding his hand, and again this is a flag were coloring it's a giant rectangle, not much precision is needed
And I realize while I'm helping him, literally moving his hand to color for him, he's CLEARLY never colored before. He's 4, there is no excuse for this when kids start coloring at like, 2 maybe younger.
By 4-5 kids can generally color inside the lines well enough and draw recognizable figures like people and landscapes and pets
Eventually he got into it, understood how to do it and requested to continue on by himself, which was great! I told him I was proud of him and we continued on with our day but it absolutely shocked me that these iPad kids are so beyond stunted like jesus
He didn't know how to grip a pencil, he didn't know the wrist movements and motions, he didn't understand the pressure control, he had no control over where or how he was coloring like, these kids NEED TO learn these things it's STARTLING how many kids don't have these milestones and are just not developing these fine motor skills
Ask any kindergarten attendant and they'll tell you the same thing-
The best thing you can do for a kid is buy them a shitton of construction paper, decorative child-safe scissors, and coloring books
Please please please kids need to cut paper up and color. It helps them develop so many fine motor skils
Now don't be mistaken, the percentage of these kids are low, for now. It's definitely not every kid, and thankfully not the majority but it is still a problem
What you're going to start seeing is a social class stratification of this.
I was at an MVA call--car into a powerline. Three kids, 9, 5, and 2 years old, trapped in the back of a car, crushed against a pole, live lines on the car. Meaning they were fine as long as they stayed inside but we couldn't cut the car open until the power company came and killed the line.
It took about a half an hour. We were all losing our MINDS thinking about three kids who had just been in a significant car accident, unknown injuries, trapped in a car without their mom, and all these strange noises and people around them. We thought these kids would be terrified.
Nope. All three of them were on devices watching videos. Like they didn't even register what had happened or the danger they'd been in or why people were so worried, or even THAT we were worried.
The most distress I saw the kids in as we drove the 30 minutes to the peds hospital? Was when the 2 year old's device's battery died. She went from sitting unnaturally quietly staring at Cocomelon to SCREAMING and throwing things and biting anyone. She only calmed down when her older brother agreed to share his device with her.
It was spooky af, man.
The mom thought she was doing a great job bc her kids were 'so well behaved'. To this day I wonder about kids who cannot process anything other than visual dopamine. How are they going to do in school? Sure? But how about their social development? How are they going to have friends? Boyfriends? Girlfriends? Anything?
As an educator; seriously, stop using technology to regulate children. It's constant mental chemical boosts, so they don't develop the ability to regulate their own brains.
That means that when they don't have access to tech-the self regulation is not there.
There have been a few videos of tantrums floating around the internet? I've seen them in person, in school, when I've informed a student that a computer is a tool, not a toy.
Children are losing cooperative skills, social skills.
School districts that are banning cell phones are seeing academic scores go up & behavior referrals go down; once the withdrawal stops.
Don't let it become an addiction in the first place, and certainly don't feed it.
Let your child learn how to be bored.
