Raising "Digital Natives" with The Family iPad

Finally, a parenting piece in The Atlantic has validated my parenting choices, whoo hoo! There's a great article in the April issue by Hanna Rosin (having typed that, I'm pretty sure hell might have just frozen over) that just arrived in the mail but I can't seem to find a link to anywhere online, called "The Touch-Screen Generation." Reads like a very well-intentioned parenting blog post, like a more in-depth, reporty version of something straight out of Ask Moxie. But, of course, the cover photo is creepy - and, um, it happens to looks just like my kid, complete with the iPad covering up her face (I mean, it's The Atlantic, what else did I expect?)

In it, I learned some new-to-me terms: Digital Natives - they are the first generations of children growing up fluent in the language of computers, video games, and other technologies. Everybody else are Digital Immigrants, just struggling to understand. Of course, we all know exceptions, but from where I set these monikers generally fit.

The Hush family is the proud owner of one sole, cherished, iPad. It gets a lot of use by all of us, preschoolers and adults alike. For now, we have just the one in our house. Kind of like there was just "The Phone" singular, or "The TV" singular when I was growing up in the 1980s. My parents and I often had to wait our turn to use it. (I'm thinking of that Louis C.K. bit about having only one of something in the house growing up, and how awesome things are now by comparison.)

We let the kids play educational apps on the iPad at home pretty much whenever the mood strikes them (except bedtime, when we all take a tech time out - on the presumption it might inhibit sleep, but I wonder about that). More on those specific apps after the jump. We each happen to use the family iPad somewhat differently.

I use it only to watch The Walking Dead on Netflix while I run on the treadmill (and let me tell you, there's nothing like zombies to encourage you to pick up your pace.) DH uses it for sales pitches at work, and to do his online shopping. Funny, we also have a desktop iMac in my office, but I'm pretty much the only one who ever uses it. We rarely allow the kids to touch our phones - DH has an iPhone, and I have a Droid but I now wish I could travel back in time to 2011 and pick an iPhone instead. Oh well, my decision made sense at the time. Compared to my peers, I hardly ever upgrade my cell phones, and I have only had a lifetime total of 3 cell phones since I was forced (as in, personally called in to the boss' office and told to pick one up ASAP) to get my first, for work, in 2004 - and by then I was super late to that party.

Anyway, our youngest was born in the fall of 2009. The iPad came out in April 2010. We got ours sometime in 2011, and it is hard to remember life as a parent without it.

These days, you'll pry our family iPad out of our cold, dead hands!! I know, I know. But isn't this just another iteration of that dreaded "screen time" the APA urges us to limit because it rewires children's brains? My luddite friend who is training to be a Waldorf teacher thinks we're doing our children irreparable harm. I think she means well, but she's drinking the Kool-Aid and does not have children of her own yet. I, too, was an awesome parent before I had kids.


I absolutely love the ("educational"? yes, yes, absolutely) apps our kids use. Our three-year-old loves the Starfall ABCs app, Memory Train, and Montessori Crosswords.  Our five-year-old is currently fond of Stack the States, (and Stack the Countries), Star Walk, and Slice It!.  Let's just say I'm utterly convinced my kids are benefitting from having these apps occupy some space in their childhoods. I might not feel that way if they were on the iPad each and everyday, but they're not. They use it with about the same frequency as they use any other "toy" or activity at our house. Sometimes they go way more than a week without asking for it.  Should we as parents be treating the iPad any differently than we treat, say, books, art supplies, Montessori works, TV, or sports equipment? What role does screen time generally have in your family life?



And I'm always on the lookout for more app recommendations, so if you've got them, please leave them in the comments.

American Horror Story, and a play dough obsession

Anyone have too much time on their hands and need another TV show to start watching? Want to be scared shitless by a TV show with only a mere TV-MA rating?

Then you need to start watching American Horror Story on FX. It debuted on Oct 5th, so catch the second episode tomorrow night, Oct 12. It stars recognizable-faced Dylan McDermott, Vera Farmiga's little sister, the fabulous Ms. Jessica Lange, and one of my personal favorite character actors in the history of ever, Mr. Denis O'Hare (aka Russell Edgington from True Blood).

The premise? A therapist's family getting over some late-term miscarriage and infidelity trauma moves into a haunted house in L.A., and of course all hell breaks loose!

Don't say I didn't warn you - it's SCEERY!

In other news, I take DD to an organized playgroup one morning a week. It is so precious to hear her call her new little playmates by name, and ask for them repeatedly after we go home. I love how she adorably mispronounces some of their names.

DS is apparently obsessed with play dough at Montessori. So much so that his teacher approached me to talk about how we might encourage him to branch out into trying some of the other works available to him at school. I replaced all of the off-brand play doh we'd been using at home (which DS told his teacher was too hard,) and that he liked the softer dough at school better. Then we encouraged DS to play with the new dough all weekend, which he did, happily. We'll see if this helps him get over his obsession, or whether it just continues to feed it. His explanation? "I just really love it."

Makes perfect sense to me.

Montessori Day One, Or Why Did I Ever Worry?

On my clock, I've only got 20 minutes of "summer" left. Forget what the calendar says about the actual beginnings and endings of seasons around the solstices [would the plural of that be 'solsti'?]. I define "summer" as any day in June, July, and August. Full stop. Let me enjoy my incorrect assumption please.

There is something sucky about the week leading up to Labor Day. The end of American summer. The start of school. Suddenly it gets noticeably cooler. The waterparks and pools are about to close. Halloween decor is all of the sudden every-damn-where you look. I no longer feel as comfy sporting my white jeans, madras print, and jute tote bag. I notice it is actually dark at 9pm.

My firstborn "baby," who'll turn 4 in about 7 weeks, started half day, drop off, bilingual English/Spanish Montessori preschool today. We had been talking about it all month. Literally, All Month Long. You see, my Mr. Spirited seems to do best with lots and lots of notice about upcoming transitions.

"You're going to Montessori in a few weeks, so-and-so will be there, Mama and Daddy won't go into the classroom with you because you need time to be with your friends, your works, and your teachers, then we'll pick you up when class is dismissed. And you get to wear special McQueen slippers only at school...."

To which DS usually responded with "Are we going today? You mean today-today??"... "I don't want to be dropped off!" ... "Why can't you come in the classroom with me?"... "What are you going to do while I'm at school?"... "No, Mama! I want you to take me with you while you do your work and run errands!"... "I don't want to speak Spanish!"

We drove up at 8am today. One of the teachers was waiting by the door. I was fully expecting a tearful goodbye, with DS kicking and screaming. Nope. DS bid a cheerful "Hola!" to the teacher and ran right into the school. Without so much as a goodbye. See ya! So I handed the teacher his things, and got the eff out of there before DS changed his mind.

At the 11:45am pickup, DS was the last kid out of the classroom. He didn't want to leave.

Tonight, all he did was talk about school. He mentioned the names of a boy and a girl he wants to be friends with. He told me that the teachers don't allow any candy at school, and that if he uses naughty words or fights with the other kids, he'll be "kicked right out." (Um, pretty sure they didn't say it quite like that. Gotta love preschooler speak!) He demanded I take him back there tomorrow.

They say today is the tomorrow you worried about yesterday. ;) Wishing you many smooth transitions.

How Does Montessori Do It?

This morning I took DS (aged 3 years, 3 months) to a local Montessori preschool for an in-class observation before we formally complete the registration paperwork and pay a deposit to secure his spot in this fall's entering class. The plan is for DS to go at least 3 mornings a week the year he turns 4 (this fall), and then either 4 or 5 mornings or full days a week (we'll see how the upcoming year goes) the year he turns 5; then he'll be off to our local public school for K-12. I've blogged about the public school choice issue before, and right now the plan is to send him to the school in our home district; I'm pretty sure we're not going to want to choice into the away district's dual language school when the time comes. Our friend's first grader is having a hellacious year there with the district's crazy, ineffective discipline policy (called "Make Your Day") and the administration has been no help, so we've pretty much written them off.

Today I was completely blown away by how this entire room of 3, 4, 5, and 6 year-olds was just so eerily quiet, with each and every child focused on their "work" (aka oddly interesting pieces of toddler & preschooler crack) at these small tables or on all of these neatly-arranged floor mats. Then I was blown away yet again by the fact that my son actually participated in this unspoken routine of his own volition (!!), without any type of struggle (!!), and was transformed right before my eyes into a model little citizen within this unique little world without needing much instruction. After an hour and a half of observation, the teacher (beloved by all in Podunkville, and I can see why) proclaimed he would fit right in, and said she looked forward to welcoming him this fall. Then she said she needed to make a note to herself not to ever touch him again without his permission first because he physically bristled at her when she touched his arm while she was showing him how to do a "work," and she said he was the first child in all her years to react in that particular way to her touch, and she was truly impressed. Huh? I almost fell over. I think I finally met someone who "gets" my kid! It was pretty cool that she chose to view his reaction in such a positive light, and formed a strategy for working with him that didn't automatically label him a misfit.

I can't stop thinking about how well DS meshed with this place. You recall that this is the kid who, once he turned the dreaded 3, had to quit pretty much every activity we used to enjoy. This is a kid who has a reputation of being just very hard in general, as in 'Your Spirited Child' to a T. So I was sure he'd hate the place. I've never been happier to say I was wrong!

Now I kind of want to know how it is that they do it. I understand that the term "Montessori" does not reflect a trademarked brand, and so it can mean a million different things depending on the school. Even in Podunkville we have 2 "Montessoris" - one that the locals refer to as "the real Montessori" meaning every kid has to go 5 days a week and commit to 3 years including Kindergarten; and the place we attended today, aka what the locals call "the fake Montessori" where there is flexibility as to the level of attendance. Anyway, I was majorly impressed, but left before I could really figure out the proverbial secret sauce they have going on in there. My guess is DS really connected with the getting to choose his own "work" to do, where he could just jump right in, and not have to sit there in a circle on a carpet square, and talk or listen to other people singing, or do craft projects he isn't into - which were the common themes of all the activities he now hates. Hmmm.....