St. Jude has put together some great resources on how to talk with kids about the pandemic. If you’ve got children in your life, check this out.
Category: Parenting
The Weekly Briefly: Kids and Touchscreens ⇢
I joined Shawn Blanc on his weekly podcast to talk about parenting in the 21st century.
The Touch-Screen Generation ⇢
If you’re at all interested in the whole parenting and technology thing, don’t miss this great Atlantic article by Hanna Rosin.
The more things change...
My post from earlier earned me a stack of email. A lot of was in agreement, but one email from a reader named Larry jumped out at me:
At a restaurant, for example, don’t kids have crayons and a placemat to color? Hasn’t this been common for decades? How is that inherently any different than an iPad? Isn’t the point to give a child something to do? Certainly we can question specific things kids might be doing on an iPad, but isn’t the concept of offering a distraction to a child in public really pretty normal and common and not really that bad?
On Kids and Touchscreens
But the ever-present touchscreens make me incredibly uneasy—probably because they make parenting so easy. There is always one at hand to make restaurants and long drives and air travel much more pleasant. The tablet is the new pacifier.
I agree with Honan’s concluding paragraph that there isn’t a clear-cut answer for appropriate boundaries when it comes to our kids and their usage of iOS devices.
Computing With Kids ⇢
If you’ve got kids, you should check out the latest episode of the Mac Power Users podcast. It’s a great one.
Apple’s Not A Parent ⇢
Jim Dalrymple:
The simple fact is, as parents, it’s up to us to monitor what our kids do with technology or any toy. If you choose not to use the included controls because they are a hassle, then that’s your choice. You made that decision.
This.
‘A Pain in My Chest’ ⇢
Ben Brooks, writing about his daughter’s recent surgery:
We knew the wait wouldn’t be easy, and as we waited for the 10 minute surgery to be completed we were both beyond stressed, nervous, and hopeful. It seemed like an hour passed. We got the call to head back, and when we came back to our daughter, who was screaming, it wasn’t a pleasant sight.
She was in pain and not around anyone that she knew. She was scared. It was a terrible sight for any parent.
LeVar Burton, on Reading
…in an interview with Ars’ Jacqui Cheng:
This is one of the reasons it was so important to me, from a personal level, to bring Reading Rainbow to this new generation of kids, to try and do something about it. Here’s what I know: in 26 years on PBS, we were able to—through the medium of television—have an impact on the reading habits of children. I want to see if we can make light and do it again.