Exploring Our Children’s Potentials

[Personally, I much prefer THIS kind of ‘human interactions’. It allows the parent and child to bond and have fun together too. Realistically though, we parents are often too tired to be ‘engaged’  throughout the bus trip and prefer to simply sit and relax for a while]

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I don’t know about you, but I feel there’s one increasing ‘trend’ that’s happening amongst us, that is: we tend to occupy ourselves with gadgets.

Anywhere.

Anytime.

[And I know I’m very prone to this too, and I need to constantly remind myself to ‘disconnect to connect’ with loved ones who’re around me. I wrote a post on this sometime ago, btw, click HERE to read it!]

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I do notice that kids are picking up this ‘trend’ as well (without them realising, obviously).

ie. They somehow prefer to keep themselves occupied with ‘some thing’. They find it ‘hard’ to be still and NOT do anything much.

For our case, rather than sit in a car (or the bus or the train) ‘doing nothing’, our kids often ask for our mobile phone (more specifically, Daddy’s Iphone!) so they could play with a game or two.

Anya, for example, would sometimes ask if she could see my phone (to simply fiddle or write some things on the ‘Notes’ page, because my phone has NO games on it!) within 2-3 minutes upon boarding the bus. The bus trip itself may not even last for more than 10 mins!

Sometimes I DO let them play with my phone (or Daddy’s Iphone if he’s with us). BUT, most of the time I would VERY MUCH prefer that they do OTHER activities, ie. Things OTHER than engaging themselves in gadgets. Especially when they have other friends or families around them.

I mean, they (and us) could always  :

– TALK and CHAT with each other

– LOOK OUT the window and check out the many passing cars or whatever other things that are happening OUTSIDE

[When Vai asks to play with our phone, I’d sometimes look out the bus window and ask if he could name the different car brands he sees. It’s a simple way of distracting and engaging him in a ‘different’ activity, and it often works. And as he does it, I’d need to pay attention and listen to him as well, which often requires quite a bit of ‘self denial’ because I often prefer to just sit quietly and ‘not talk’]

– PLAY traditional games like ‘chopsticks’, ‘heart attack’, ‘guess the animal’, or even the game ‘elephant, man and ant’ (an Indonesian game using 3 fingers, like what Vai and Daddy were doing in the photo above!)

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Personally, I just feel such ‘human’ INTERACTIONS are much better than simply engaging one’s concentration on a small screen (well, a big one if you’re using an Ipad, a laptop or a computer!).

I mean, I’m okay with technology and all, BUT I’m NOT okay if technology increasingly takes away human relationships and interactions.

And, I must say, I do notice that kids often (automatically) ask to play with gadgets because other than the fact that it’s more fun than doing ‘nothing’, the parents often do not regularly initiate interactions with the little ones to begin with, anyway (or are busy with their own gadgets too).

Hmm. I don’t know.

Do YOU notice this trend too? How do you normally respond to it?