Technology and my preschooler

Have a child and you will discover how technologically un-savvy you really are. Even if you knew going into it that you were completely un-savvy, watching your toddler master your "smart" phone and be able to do sh*t with it that you didn't even know was possible will drive the true magnitude of your un-savvyness home with the force of a supernova.

By the time your child hits preschool, you can be certain that you will never be as familiar or as comfortable as technology as she is.

Conversation with Brenna yesterday:

B: oooh! Pretty! Mommy, I like your necklace! It looks like CDs!

um, yes, I guess it does.

I thought of the disks as coins but I guess it all depends on your frame of reference.





On tablets and iPads:

About 6 months ago we bought a Samsung tablet. Ostensibly, this tablet is mine and I promptly loaded all (four) of my favorite apps on it: a crossword app that gives me the Wall St. Journal friday puzzle every week, WordFeud, Kindle and....uh, something else that I can't remember. I also arranged the preloaded apps onto the screen and picked a clock widget that I like. Job done.

Then I figured I'd make a screen with games for Brenna so she would stop bugging me to play games on my phone. Brenna now has an entire screen of princess, barbie, fancy nancy, and hello kitty games, and the requsite Monkey's Lunchbox and a couple other "learning" apps (which we didn't really need scientific research and press coverage to know that our kids weren't really learning anything other than to be sedentary...and quiet....ok, quieter.

And there is no place where quieter is more
appreciated than on an airplane

Several months passes and I discoverd that not only could Brenna easily navigate from the locked device to her favorite games - including unlocking the home screen, swiping to her page, picking games, closing pop-ups etc. But she had also mastered taking photos and videos, navigating to her favorite channels in YouTube, and once even posting a Hello Kitty game she likes to my Facebook page (but I'm pretty sure that was an accident).

Conversation between Brenna and Daddy several months ago after Daddy got an iPad:

B: Daddy, is that your tablet (pointing to the iPad)?
D: Yes, that's mine.
B (pointing to MY tablet): And that's my tablet.
D: Um....
B: Daddy, where's mommy's tablet? We should really get mommy her own tablet.

Right.

Well, at least I can still lay claim to my phone...Or can I?

Recently:
B: Mommy! I'm taking pictures with your phone and I will send them to you when I'm done.
(Great. She's going to send me pictures from my own phone. Wait! She knows how to forward pictures?!)

 - A little while later -

Photo credit: Brenna
I have no clue what she took a picture of but I think
she has a future in abstract art.

B: Mommy? Can you send me some photos?
M: What?
B: Send me some photos for my school thing.
M: You want me to send you pictures?
B: Yes. For my school thing that I need to make.
M: You mean print some pictures?
B: Yes! Print them!
M: Sorry sweetie, we don't have a printer.
B: What?! Oh. But how are we going to send pictures?



A preschooler's wisdom on when to stop playing on the iPhone:

B (handing my phone back to me): I don't want to play on your phone anymore. My fingers are sweaty.

And finally, this is just too disturbing to put words to:


creeeeeeepy!










Really, I don't want to know what she was thinking when she plugged the keyboard into the baby's mouth.