Hey, and you know what, kids can also install ComputerTime on their parents computers to prevent their parents from spending too much time on the computer!
Source: momfilter – TheLogOff.org
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A Dad, Mom, and six kids tried an experiment and totally unplugged from their gadgets for a week.
What do you it turned out like? Yelling? Arguments? Kids breaking down and going into total melt down mode? Will Mom and Dad even be able to resist their urges and overcome their addictions?
“But it was too hard, and I worked out I didn’t have room at work, so I unplugged everything from the wall and took all the remote controls and hid them instead.”
Despite the trepidation, the result came as a surprise to everyone.
Rather than fall apart, the family rediscovered the value of spending time with each other instead of staring at a screen.
“I didn’t think it would go as easily as it did,” Mr Mason said.
“Fortunately the weather was good, meaning the kids could spend a lot of time playing with the neighbours’ kids in the street outside.”
Puzzles, board games and conversation also filled the gadget void.
The Masons said the social experiment had changed their lives as a family. For a start, television viewing is now banned at the weekends, enabling them to spend more quality time together.
And this this part hasn’t surprised me one bit, because it echo’s what so many ComputerTime customers have told me over the years:
“We’ve seen a totally different attitude from the kids,” Mr Mason said.
He said it was fascinating to watch how his brood changed their behaviour and adapted to the altered circumstances.
“At the start of the week they whinged a bit, but by about Wednesday they were over it.
“By the end of the week they weren’t asking for anything because they knew it wasn’t going to happen.”
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Are your kids getting enough the life skills that they need?
While I guess it’s great that kids are so tech-savvy, the study points out that they may not be getting the “life skills” they need in other areas of their lives. In an interview, AVG’s Tony Anscombe said “Because we (adults) are so connected, maybe what we don’t understand is what we’re actually doing is connecting our children the same way, and it’s becoming normal for them and maybe we’re ignoring some of those life skills as well.”
Anscombe added, “as parents there is a digital responsibility to be had. We need to look at making sure that we give our children a balanced life and a mix of both life skills and technical skills.“
Source: cnet: Safe and Secure
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If only you would stop spending 4.5 hours a day in front of your screens!
Get your bodies moving!
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Though it’s a couple of years old, I came across a free e-book about free range kids: No Fear: Growing up in a risk averse society, by Tim Gill.
This is not to be confused with the Free Range Kids blog by Lenore Skenazy, or her upcoming book called Free-Range Kids: Giving Our Children the Freedom We Had Without Going Nuts with Worry
The “No Fear” e-book was found via Instapundit.
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…or technology makes our lives better… worse… better… worse…
The recent post on television made a point that people will disagree until the cows come home about if television is good or bad. Or if it makes us smarter or dumber. But it’s not about the technology. It’s about how the technology is used. Television can bring educational material to you that you just can’t get in your local schools. That’s fantastic. But you can also get 24/7, inane Disney channel programming that can sap the life out of your family and reduce the kids to zombies who come back alive and freak out when you yank the plug. That’s horrible.
People continue to argue for one side or the other of that debate as if devices can change you, and as if there is one right answer.
Perhaps it’s not the devices (TV, computers, video games, cell phones) that actually change people. Maybe those devices merely accentuate or exacerbate a person’s preexisting tendencies to be distracted, waste time, and avoid doing other important and more productive things. If the person’s tendencies are towards being responsible and being focused on the right things, then they will make good use of the device.
A laptop, in the hands of an intelligent, motivated, focused person will allow the person to do wonders as they work towards goals. The same laptop in the hands of an unmotivated slacker that suffers from ADD will probably only get used playing online games, watching YouTube videos, and IMing their friends all day long.
In the end, they’re just tools to be used, and then can be used positively or negatively. Does it make sense to blame the tool for the outcome?
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How much technology is “too much, too soon”?
Opinions on this vary so much and most parents make their decisions from the gut anyways, or they just leave it up to the kids to decide. If the kids like computers, video games and gadgets, they just let them have at it.
My friend Brett (Dadtalk) ponders this question as he notices that his kids don’t want to play with the “toy versions” of things. They much prefer the real things. I noticed this with my kids too, my daughter when she was 2 couldn’t leave our TV remove alone. So we bought her this flashy toy one. Instead of black and gray, it was bright red, blue, green, and yellow, and each button played fancy sounds and made the device flash. In no time she became bored with it and kept wanting the real TV remote again.
Like most parents, Brett spends a lot of time thinking about the welfare of his kids and what he can do for them now to prepare the for the real world. He wants them to have an edge in the real world. Who wouldn’t. And the tools of the real world contain computers, cell phones, PDAs. Brett comments:
“One day a computer will be the single most important tool in their lives.”
Hold that thought.
I met a neighbor at a soccer game once, and we chatted. I told him about the product that I was developing, ComputerTime, and how it would help parents limit the time that their kids would spend on the computer because some kids just can’t get off of them without a lot of effort on the part of their parents. His response was, “Oh! I don’t think I would want that on my computer. If I could get my kids to use it 24 hours a day, I would!” Huh? You want to raise a sedentary, greasy, anti-social, pasty-white, introverted nerd?
As somebody who has worked in the software development world, let me tell you what it’s about in a nutshell.
- Problem Solving
- Creativity
- Ability to Learn New Things
- Motivation
- Communication
- Listening
- Speaking
- Leadership
- Persistence
- Imagination
- Teamwork
- Designing Complex Systems
- Doing Computer Things (writing code, Googling, creating documents, email, etc)
The point is, that a job in the computer field can be lucrative, but if you put your kids on a computer for 24 hours a day, are they going to learn how to do all of those other things on the critical skill list above? And that list is about the same for any other career your kids might be interested in.
Kids need to learn those other skills and they’ll do by playing with other kids, getting involved in group activities, playing alone, reading, talking, helping Mom and Dad around the home, being left alone for a while with a problem with real objects in our real environment, walking the dog, helping cook dinner, building a dog house, helping fix the alternator on the car, and sure, using electronic devices once in a while.
I did all of these things growing up and I didn’t start using a computer until I was 15. And look where I am today! Steeped in technology, being successful, and yet always struggling to keep up with the constant change!
Think about this: Compare cell phones now to cell phones 10 years ago, or cell phones 20 years ago. Compare DOS to Windows 3.1 to Windows Vista. Compare Fidonet BBS, to AOL, to the World Wide Web 1995 to the World Wide Web 2007. Do you think anything your kids learn today, technology-wise is going to matter when they’re coming out of college in 20 years? The landscape will look quite different than it does today. I’m sure of that.
So what’s going to be the single most important tool in your kids lives? Their brains, properly equipped with a broad range of problem-solving and social skills!
So Brett, don’t worry too much about your kids falling behind in the technology curve. I think they’ll do great. Focus on the basics and raise wonderful, creative, well-rounded adults who can problem solve in a team environment and persist at things and be really fun to work with, and they will prosper. Those skills never become obsolete, and in a tech industry, they sometimes seem so hard to come by these days.
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I stayed in for Black Friday, but I’m going to start thinking about Christmas presents now. What are you going to do for toys this year? The news must be scaring a lot of parents and creating anxiety in Toys ‘R’ Us shoppers.
Brett Levy has been talking a lot about toy recalls on DadTalk. (Just keep on scrolling through the pages. His coverage of this topic is spread across many posts.)
How about avoiding the heavily marketed, cheap, potentially dangerous toys and go for naturally made, handcrafted, toys. You don’t want toys that do all the entertaining for your kids. You want simple toys that provide the basis for your kids to kick their imaginations into gear and let them entertain themselves!
What are you getting the kids for Christmas? What are your favorite sources for high-quality, safe, eco-friendly toys?
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