Chloe, our five year old, asks me every morning, “Mom, is my phone on the charger?”
Yes Chloe. Your toy, plastic, princess “phone” from Dollarama that also acts as a hidden make-up mirror is on the “charger” which is actually a felt stuffed bun (maybe?) from a toy back in the day when kids played with toys and knew that felt was not going to charge anything so much as you might get a little static if you rubbed it long enough in your hair next to a dozen balloons.
My kids are obsessed with their electronic gadgets—obsessed.
We need them as much as they do. I don’t mean for personal use. As a stay at home Mom, I could probably get away with the paper cup attached to a string with a second paper cup on the other end. (Provided the first paper cup had unlimited texting because they really nail you for that if you’re not on some sort of “plan”)
What I mean is we need to use them as a bargaining tool when the kids are acting out by shoving straws into orifices other than their (own) mouths or calling me Lizard as opposed to “Big Mama-Cita,” my given name.
Try as we might to limit their time, Ellie has been hooked on some really educational games lately. Last night while I was giving Chloe a bath for example, she was shouting down the hall at me, “Mom, what is the ‘median’ of 2, 4, 1, 3, 7, 2?” and I had no choice but to chug the bottle of bubble bath because the day has arrived when my child in grade three knows more than I do.
I love that she’s excited about learning and I don’t want to take away the one device that can feed that excitement.
At the same time, Chloe is playing on another gadget where a group of platypuses, (platypii?) shuffle back and forth and each time she clicks on one, they poop. It’s not as though they poop gold or points or the cure for cancer, it’s steaming, platypus (platypii) poop in its rawest form. Yep. It’s a game and my five year old loves it.
We made an early decision to ban electronic gadgets from ever going into the kid’s bedrooms to avoid any risk of danger with the exception of e-readers which they are permitted to use.
How much is too much?
