The 'Mother' of all blogs: Raising kids in Westchester without losing your mind

Oct 29, 2009

02:26 PM

I’ve Rebooted My Thinking About Preschoolers & Computers

At a time when texting and Twitter has made email almost quaint, a new compulsion (addiction?) has emerged from the zeitgeist. The desire among young and old to have instantaneous access to information and the ever increasing commonplace habit to bleat out our own exalted opinion to our “friends,” “fans,” and—even if they don’t want to get them—family, has fostered a whole new genre of worry for parents.

Welcome to the age of Internet Anxiety.

I’m grappling with my own online issues and recently made an interesting discovery. Before we left for summer vacation in August, I found myself compulsively checking all my favorite Internet sites several times an hour. The reasons for this were that things were deadly slow in the office at the time and the tabloid targets that keep the clicks coming were indulging in more outlandish behavior than usual. I have to admit, I love a good train wreck. I couldn’t get enough.

I didn’t notice it at the time, but the more time I spent online, the more anxious I felt. If I had to describe it, I’d call it a free-floating anxiety that wasn’t tied to anything in particular. I did, though, feel that the more I read online, the more I had to continue to read. I don’t know what I thought I was missing when I wasn’t online, but the compulsion to stay “on top of it all” was overwhelming.

Then we went to Maine, where the WiFi service was spotty at best and, I went cold turkey. I returned to that old-fashioned custom of reading the newspaper every morning.

I was forced to focus on my own life rather than follow the minute-to- minute developments of Jon and Kate and the rest of the tabloid traveling freak show. Sweet freedom! And rather than check HuffPost every fifteen minutes for news on President Obama’s whereabouts and updates on the First Lady’s ever-expanding wardrobe of cardigans, I relied once again on newspapers to give me the highlights. I survived just fine and it was amazing how much extra time I suddenly had on my hands.

It has been a few months since then, but having come face to face with my Internet addiction, I have taken steps to monitor my online time and limit myself to three checks per day per site. I do, however, still indulge in some serious time-wasting on Facebook. Honestly, though, in the media business, I’m finding you’re nobody unless you’ve got at least 400 friends, so my time spent coming up with clever quips for my status updates and trolling through the random 250 posts of News feeds is for strictly professional reasons. Seriously.

While my four-and-a-half-year-old daughter hasn’t expressed any interest in any of these things, she has been asking with increasing frequency about spending time on Nick Jr.’s site. My husband and I sit at the computer with her for 15-minute intervals a few times a week and play games (Kai-Lan’s Happy House is a particular favorite). She hasn’t mastered the whole point-and-click thing yet, but she’s getting there.

My question: is this a good thing?

Of course, I’m aware that today’s child needs to be fully conversant in computers, but at what age? Some preschools make a big show of having a computer for the classroom or even some computer classes. When I went to back-to-school night at my daughter’s school, I was handed a flyer about a new just-for-fun computer class that another mom was hosting– but it happened to conflict with the already scheduled swim time that I’d signed her up for in the afternoon program.

When I asked the teacher if computers were going to be part of the curriculum, she told me the school had one computer in the class (that needed repair) and that the school found that at this age, it was a distraction for the children who wound up vying for time at the computer rather than engage in the activities that were part of the class schedule. She also said, “We don’t know how much time the children are spending at the computer at home so we think it’s best not to include it as part of the class day at this stage.”

At first, I was disappointed and thought, “What if all the other pre- schools in the area were including computers in their classes?”

That was immediately followed by another thought: “Is that really a bad thing?”

The answer, at least for our family, is “no.”

Here I am, an adult struggling with trying to whittle down my time spent online so I can be more productive. Did I really want to have my child introduced to something that could be equally distracting to her—but, in this case, take her away from the fleeting joys of childhood?

Maybe it’s a counter-intuitive response, but, in my house, it’s the right one.

I don’t know about you, but I am horrified every time I go out to dinner and see children with their heads buried in a computer game while at the table with their parents. And, why, may I ask, is this always at a swanky, expensive place? I often surreptitiously watch the encounters between parent and child in these instances and, when it’s time to order, Mom and Dad often have to wrestle a response from these children about their day that barely registers more than a grunt. Nice.

My daughter is not allowed to bring her Leapster, an educational computer game with cartridges that teaches spelling, math, and other simple games geared to the preschool and kindergarten set, to restaurants. (She is also allowed to have it on the train—and use it with the sound off).

We also, based solely on my own anecdotal evidence, run things a bit differently than a lot of people at home. She has a lot more books than toys. She does not have a play date every day—or even once a week. She goes to all the parties she’s invited to and activities we think are appropriate, but she gets her mega-dose of socialization at school, which lasts until the late afternoon.

When I pick her up, she usually spends the rest of the day with me. We go for walks a lot and she loves to color or play dress-up. On the weekends, she usually spends one full day with her father at the park, going out to lunch and taking the weekly Target trip (where she doesn’t get a toy during every outing). We do this because she doesn’t get a lot of time with him during the week and it gives me some time to get things done.

So, when it comes to introducing her to the computer, we’ll keep it at 15-minute intervals for now and not fret over whether she can Google Dora the Explorer yet. I highly doubt this will keep her out of Harvard. I think it’s more important she learn how to write her letters before she learns to type them. And for the moment, she’ll get more out of swimming than any “fun with computers” class.

Every parent I know has made a vow to not have their children repeat their mistakes. If we avoid passing on to our children our compulsive online usage, we’d be doing them a favor.

Who knows what freeing them from the tyranny of intrusive texting, non-stop email, and the barrage of Internet sites on which anything and everything passes as “news” these days could yield?

I don’t know about you, but I’d really like to find out.

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