I’ll admit it: I gave my preschooler a kiddie computer so she would get off the adult one.

As it is, my husband and I bump up against each other using our sole desk top in the home office. Then Zoe became a third person in line for computer time. She had discovered “Super Why.” Before long, she was spending up to 45 mins at a time, singing along to the PBS Kids’ program on the Web. It teaches kids how to read, which is not a bad thing at all.

But it also meant a lot of screaming and fussing when it was time to switch it off. Plus I worried about her little hand and wrist clamped to the mouse on the adult-height table, which must surely be a recipe for repetitive stress injury.

So for Christmas, Zoe got a little plastic fake laptop with alphabet keys, that came with several fun spelling programs. (I’d tell you the make but I’ve forgotten and the only words I can find on the toy are “Made in China”…..) Does she ever play with it? No.

That’s why this story caught our eye at Cribsheet.

A question for our technology-driven times: What’s the right age to get a first cell phone? A first computer? Looks like there’s no easy answer…

This entry was posted on Friday, June 20th, 2008 at 9:50 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.