Young children today are growing up in a world that is radically different from the one in which I was raised. Technology is growing is growing at an ever increasing pace, and things are becoming obsolete before our eyes. I remember that my family got our first television on Thanksgiving day when I was four or five. It was a black and white (as was every other tv) and we watched the Macy's parade. Since I lived in Dutchess County, NY we were able to watch a total of seven channels - ABC, CBS, NBC, PBS, and three independents from the city. (In the hot summer, channels 2 (CBS)and 4 (NBC) ran into each other, so we didn't really have them) Now children have any number of television sets in their house, each with flat screens, living color, VCRs, and 200 channels. Our telephone was a black rotary phone, and we were on a party line with several other houses in the neighborhood. Dinner was always cooked on the stove and typewriters were big clunky machines. When we were teenagers we had the ultimate in new and cool - transistor radios! When I was married, my Aunt Edie from Texas gave me the latest in kitchen tools - an electric frying pan. To top it all off, when I was in college and married, I wrote long letters (by hand!) to my family and friends, walked to the post office to buy the stamps, and waited three or four days for the letter to arrive.
This new world can be confusing (another new version of windows? I just learned how to save a file on the last one!), annoying (Why can't I have caps and punctuation on my text? It is civilized!), and silly (Angry Birds? On a telephone?). Even so, I have found that email is much faster than snail mail if there is something that I want my family to know. I love not having long distance fees when I talk to my daughters for hours. Cable can sometimes be entertaining (as long as no one finds out that I love to watch Lizard Lick Towing). I enjoy keeping up with friends on Facebook, but I am tired of people who post everytime that they brush their teeth. Although I am an avid reader and love the feel of books and the time spent in the library, I am starting to develop Nook lust.
I have two major concerns with the boom in technology. The first is that people are becoming more isolated from others as they stay plugged in to their electronics or sit and play on their computer. There are so many wonderful sounds to hear outdoors, and so many good conversations are missed when ear buds are shoved deep into ears or phone owners are texting rather than listening or conversing. There are so many wonderful things in this world which are being missed in favor of Angry Birds. I realize how adictive these games can be ("I'll just shoot off one more set of balls to see if I can set the monkey free from the poachers and then I will ...."), but it is time to resist the draw of electronic.
My second concern is that electronics are taking the place of people and imagination in young children's lives. Parents are concerned that reading scores among children are dropping in this country, so they buy their children electronic toys or videos to teach the alphabet or nursery rhymes. The only trouble with this is that studies have shown that children do not learn from electronics, but from human interaction. The best thing that a parent can do to help a child prepare to learn to read well uses totally free materials - a library and a lap. Children learn language and reading readiness from people - people who read to them, sing to them, and talk to them about the world around them. This is not the ravings of a cranky grandma; this is factual and backed by sicentific evidence.
When I began in child care (almost thiry years ago - oh, my!), the children played busily during the day. The center was full of the sound of children making noises. They were racing cars, playing puppy, shooting pretend guns (yes, I know that it is not politically correct, but that is a message for another day), cooking food, ringing telephones, roaring dinosaurs, being police sirens ... the list could go on and on. Today, however, every toy makes a sound, if not several sounds so that the children have no need to do so. The solution seems simple - remove the batteries. For every battery that I have removed, a staff member or parent is waiting to replace it so that the "toy will work". (I have discovered that a soak in nice soapy water or a ride through the dishwasher will usually render the electronics inoperable. Since the toys need to be cleaned regularly, this is fairly easy to accomplish!).
Often staff members who are younger do not realize just how much these children have lost by having toys that make all of the noises for them. A few weeks ago one of my younger staff members wanted batteries because one of the fire trucks no longer had a siren. I refused the batteries and told the staff member that the child needed to learn to make the noises himself. I did explain my rationale, and sent them back to play. The staff member tried to encourage the child to be a siren, but he said that he could not. The staff member then asked the child if he knew how a fire truck sounded. The child replies, "Yes. Put in the batteries and you will, too." I rest my case.
