Internet & Our Kids
Ok I was out of action for the past 2 days as I fallen sick. Still recovering from it but I am much better now. Felt bad that I could not update my blog, so here I am.
I want to talk about the Internet and its influence on our children today. Nowadays, the internet has penetrated into our lives so much that for those parents who disallow their kids to go near a computer, they will be unable to do so when kids reach 5 years of age.
Schools gave basic computer lessons to kids when they are in Kindergarten One. That means, when our children reach 5 years of age in that year, they will be learning how to operate a computer at school.
However, for internet savvy parents (like us), our kids are exposed to the computer much much earlier. I used the computer to teach both my kids phonics when my first kid was 2 years and my second one, 1 years old. They loved it and I must say teaching phonics early was very very beneficial as they try to pronounce words they never see before using the technics taught.
My son used the computer to play those educational software programmes I bought from Toy R Us. Then he moved to playing simple online puzzle games when he was 4 years of age. My daughter was influenced as well as she wanted to find out what her brother was doing, and she will always sit beside him when he played. My son is very internet savvy, so much so it astonished us, the parents.
He went to a lot of free online games sites like miniclips.com, crazymonkeygames.com, freeonlinegames.com and several others. Now I must admit that not all games residing at these sites are desirable ones (there are plenty of violent and psycho games), got to keep an eye on him and give guidance from time to time. Now he is 6 years of age, and he knows how to use Google Search and go on YouTube to watch his favourite cartoon – Code Lyoko.
Since then, we have limited their usage of the computer to only 30 mins every weekday and 1 hour 30 mins (maximum), in 3 different timeslots during weekends.
- SweetieTots
