Too Much Technology, Too Little Toys!
It’s one of those days. The weather is a little on the chilly side. We had a rubbish night’s sleep. Okay, too much to drink last night (it IS the weekend). In short: we’re going to be staying in… for several hours… until Monday morning dawns.
Cue Cabin Fever!!!
The children are already bored.
Already! When I was their age, I’d be using my imagination; making up games, playing outside anyway wrapped up in coat and boots, and just generally getting out every single toy and having fun tormenting my sister. As I say, having fun!
But mine are children of the technical generation…
My daughter loves nothing more than to watch Cookie Swirl videos courtesy of YouTube.
Whilst I can’t deny these may have sparked some kind of talent for filming and producing her own videos with her Barbies, Descendants dolls and Lego Friends characters in the garden/on her bed and all over our dining table, I really don’t ‘get’ the obsession with watching a squeaky high-pitched twenty-somethings (I am guessing the age here) with icky nail art painted on her talons, moving Elsa and Anna about on her dressing table as she gets them to bake pretend Play Doh cookies.
But then again, it’s innocent enough. 2 million other children adore her creations, after all. And I guess it could all prove useful in future amateur dramatics. My 8 year old’s American accent could certainly rival Kate Winslet’s any day of the week.
As for my five year old (sigh), he thinks this is the best thing since sliced chocolate cake: Ryan’s Toy Review.
Ryan is basically a very lucky child to whom toy manufacturers far and wide send everything. And I mean everything. Ryan’s parents manage the whole charade which just a year into its launch has the young lad totting up more views per month than even Justin Bieber’s music videos. There’s a lot of screechy ‘super duper’ this and ‘super duper’ that via Ryan’s uber-enthusiastic Mom… and a lot of ungrateful lobbing of presents via her son, too. Well, you can certainly have too much of a good thing. I can only hope Ryan’s Mom and Pop are gifting the leftovers to local charities…
I suppose, some would say I have a lot to be thankful to these two visual outlets for. They keep my children entertained for sure. But they also keep them glued to their screens.
And do not get me started on Minecraft!
On that note, if only I could get crafty.
But getting out my pipe cleaners, cardboard and glitter is as likely as…
Madonna dueting with Miley Cyrus. I’m just totally uninclined to clap my hands together and announce as a ‘super fun’ alternative, “Well, why don’t we just make a lovely tree mural out of paint, real leaves and buttons!” or “I know, I’ll make you a mini campsite! Yes, the dining table can be the tent, My Lovelies… and I’ll get out all of the sheets and duvets to give you a genuine experience. We’ll bring the camp stove inside so you can pretend to cook… and empty the cupboards of all of Mummy’s pots, pans and baked bean tins.”
No. There will be no handmade finger puppets either.
Frankly, when it comes to anything of the creative scale, it’s baking a cake or nothing.
But they don’t even jump at the chance to do that! Except of course when it comes to licking the bowl clean.
So what to do?
The lure of Lego…?
Even this only lasts so long. And oh, the ££££s we have spent!
The rapture of reading…?
The Daisy series will only stretch so far. And then it’s time to convince them that Black Beauty’s just gotta be read because it’s a classic… even if it doesn’t involve a grizzly child flicking peas across the table.
The woo of the wooden toy…?
Yes, admittedly this does work for my son. He recently ‘inherited’ the most awesome Brio train set ever. And if he gets up before his sister on a Saturday morning, he will naturally turn to real railroad activities as opposed to watching Ryan emulate them with the latest Thomas & Co merchandise.
The pleasure of Play Doh…?
It’s all good and well until they start mixing the colours up until they become a uniform boggy marsh green with about as much appeal as playing with a clump of bogie.
Good Cop v Bad Cop
And then the parenting battles commence. I cannot stress how important it is pre babies to sit down and have this discussion about the ways you are both likely to react to any given kiddie situation, let alone pre tablet!
I will assume that an educational and creative activity is underway. I will disappear upstairs to take a bath/get dressed/pop on my face mask/change the bed sheets. On my departure, my children are busy as beavers, angelically colouring pictures of unicorns and googly eyed giants. On my return, a mere fifteen minutes later, the blissful scene has been rearranged to one of trance-like mini teenagers with attitiudes, limpet-like, absorbed in ‘Stampy Cat’ (a Minecraft host who sounds uncannily like Jimmy Carr with the hahahahaaaa soprano giggle to match), showing my children around a cave that would have Grand Designs’ Kevin McCloud yelling ‘wwwhhhhyyyyyyy? Just wwwhhhhhy? are there no interior features, no unique thumbprint of elegance, no nothing…‘ into the uninspired ZX Spectrum-esque graphic abyss.
‘What’s going on?‘ I ask my husband.
‘Oh, they were bored. I said they could go on it for half an hour…‘
An hour later and both of us are engrossed in the mundane and run-of-the-mill chores of the house. Him de-shelling prawns. Me – folding yet more washing.
‘Just another half hour and then that is IT for the weekend!‘ I remind them.
And so it goes on… until before you know it you’re prizing their beloved babies off them amidst stamping of feet and horrified you’re-the-worst-Mum-EVER screams and you wonder what ever possessed you to buy these supposedly ‘educational’ gizmos in the first place?
They’re great kids, don’t get me wrong. They love music. They go to dance school once a week. They play sport, they run on the beach, they fly kites, they swim,they make sandcastles and trampoline. They ride bikes and scooters. They’re even bilingual. But I don’t want them to grow up repressed and prone to rebellion because I have deprived them of the kind of mainstream gadgets (and, let’s face it, the skills that come with operating those gadgets) so freely granted to their peers.
I remember a girl at school whose family never owned a TV, and as freeing as that might be as an adult (to never have your thoughts tainted by the news, to never have to endure another Simon Cowell celebrity TV panel with the backdrop of ‘Flying Without Wings’ and to never have to switch TV stations 5 times in a row of a weekend to avoid Ant and Dec’s world domination), as a teen, she definitely missed out on many a shared cultural discussion about whether Freddie from Scooby Doo or He-man was the hottest guy in animation. She never knew the thrill of the countdown until The Muppet Show on a Saturday night. And to have missed out on Pat Sharpe’s hair on Fun House, well, having a giggle at that was a veritable right of passage for us all.
The moral of the story?
Think twice about the age when you unleash the power of the tablet. I am talking electronics here of course… Because just like Pandora’s Box, once it’s opened, you can’t take it back. It’ll constantly be there, lurking in the background, tempting The Good Cop in your household that it’s ‘anything for a good life’ and ‘just another half hour won’t hurt’ and ‘it’s kind of educational really because Minecraft is like virtual Lego… so that’s creative…’
Those Danish masters of Lego got it right, you know. ‘Leg‘ and ‘godt‘. Two simple words put together.
Play and well.
