BS: I-pods and parenting

Subject: BS: I-pods and parenting
From: GUEST,Morti at work
Date: 28 Sep 10 - 12:04 PM

Sorry if I am being an old grump about this but twice in the last few weeks I have seen parents, one with a toddler ( 2/3) in a pushchair and one with a four year old, I would guess, plugged into their i-pods whilst out with their kids.

Now I bow to no-one in my love of the i-pod, it makes dull paperwork afternoons at the office so much more bearable but surely this is where people should be drawing the line?

I remember with fondness the conversations we would have when the kids and I were out and about, a running commentary on what we saw and thought. I know there is clear evidence that these kinds of conversations aid language development, closer relationships and literacy but actually,just as importantly in my view, they were fun!

It makes me angry to see parents foregoing this crucial part of their child's development and I wonder what it says to the child? 'You are so uninteresting I would rather listen to music than talk to you?'

Sad, sad times IMO.

End of rant, sorry.

Subject: RE: BS: I-pods and parenting
From: katlaughing
Date: 28 Sep 10 - 12:31 PM

Couldn't have said it better, Morti!

Subject: RE: BS: I-pods and parenting
From: catspaw49
Date: 28 Sep 10 - 12:36 PM

Nice rant Morti......I'm proud of you.

Spaw

Subject: RE: BS: I-pods and parenting
From: gnu
Date: 28 Sep 10 - 01:10 PM

Me too!

Not to mention places like parking lots can be dangerous places with your ears full of music.

Subject: RE: BS: I-pods and parenting
From: David C. Carter
Date: 28 Sep 10 - 01:45 PM

Friends of ours lost their 17 year old daughter last year.She stopped alongside a truck waiting at a stop light,she was on her bicycle, listening to her I-pod,despite her father's warning about the dangers of such things.The lights changed,the truck turned right,she went to go straight.She neither saw or heard the truck pull away.
I don't need to tell you the rest.

My own son won't listen to anything, even when he's driving in the car;says he likes to be aware of what's going on around him.

David

Subject: RE: BS: I-pods and parenting
From: ranger1
Date: 28 Sep 10 - 04:25 PM

All I can say is that it must be awfully lonely for those kids. If their parents are as tuned out later as they are now, I shudder to think about what their lives are going to be like as teens.

Subject: RE: BS: I-pods and parenting
From: Bee-dubya-ell
Date: 28 Sep 10 - 04:34 PM

Listening to an I-pod sends a message to other people. That message is this:

"I'm ignoring you. You aren't important. What's being piped into my ears is more important than anything you might have to say."

There's nothing wrong with sending that message under appropriate circumstances (like on a train commute home after a long day), but it's not a good message to send a kid you're supposed to be having some "quality time" with.

Subject: RE: BS: I-pods and parenting
From: Amos
Date: 28 Sep 10 - 04:42 PM

Hear, hear. Especially, hear your kids!!

A

Subject: RE: BS: I-pods and parenting
From: VirginiaTam
Date: 28 Sep 10 - 05:09 PM

Cats in the cradle and the silver spoon, little boy blue and the man in the moon. When ya comin home, Dad/son? I don't know when, but we'll have a good time then son/Dad. We're gonna have a good time then.

Even though I was pretty present whenever I was around my kids, I still feel I missed so much and I regret it. Do you think these absent parents will ever regret the lost moments? I don't know. I think people nowadays are different. Maybe it is my age.

Subject: RE: BS: I-pods and parenting
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 28 Sep 10 - 05:21 PM

Oh give us a break from the parenting police! How many more threads?

Have people forgotten "Children should be seen and not heard"?

Most of the time people escaping their children are doing so because the children are driving them mad. Parents should not be slaves to children.

Subject: RE: BS: I-pods and parenting
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 28 Sep 10 - 05:22 PM

PS - where did this unpleasant neologism "parenting" come from and why?

Subject: RE: BS: I-pods and parenting
From: Bee-dubya-ell
Date: 28 Sep 10 - 05:54 PM

"Parenting" has been around since 1959.

Subject: RE: BS: I-pods and parenting
From: Bee-dubya-ell
Date: 28 Sep 10 - 06:21 PM

It replaced "parentcraft", which is possibly even worse.

Subject: RE: BS: I-pods and parenting
From: Morticia
Date: 28 Sep 10 - 06:59 PM

Then, Richard dear, (and yes, I do know you are being controversial you little scamp you) if you don't actually want to spend time with your children, why have them?

Subject: RE: BS: I-pods and parenting
From: Ernest
Date: 29 Sep 10 - 01:57 AM

Richard: Apparently* people haven`t forgotten "Children should be seen an not heard". That`s why they are using the I-Pods now.

Who do you guess was making the children driving others mad in the first place?

;0)
Ernest

*= hope you don`t mind the word ap-parent-ly....:0)

Subject: RE: BS: I-pods and parenting
From: VirginiaTam
Date: 29 Sep 10 - 02:45 AM

Saying I regret the missed moments... I am now remembering the times in a near zombie state that I dragged my little bickering blessings through a grocery shop, which (because we shopped sales and clipped coupons) entailed no less than 3 different stores and more than half a day to get the weekly shop done. Add to that the 30 minute drive both ways to get to and from town and you can imagine.......

Kind of miraculous being able to keep 3 distinct personalities all jockeying for attention entertained and safe while keeping part of the brain on whatever task is at hand. Pretending we are astronauts and cannot wonder away from the spaceship (shopping trolley) or we might get sucked away into space only works some of the time.

I was not able to keep it up continuously.

Subject: RE: BS: I-pods and parenting
From: GUEST,Patsy
Date: 29 Sep 10 - 04:10 AM

I-pods aren't the only culprits, long involved conversations on the mobile phone while pushing the children along and can I include hand held games while the children are trying to get mummy's attention? My son's ex-partner was sometimes so engrossed she missed the bits of conversation her little daughter was trying to talk to her about and she was not a particularly demanding child. If in the circumstance that a child is asleep on a bus or on a long train journey then yes fine. When mine were small, walkmans were just beginning to be around but I found there were so many other things to think about before setting off that the last thing I would have thought about would have been packing that as well or wiring my ears up with it.

The comment about children should be seen and not heard is a bit archaic, and in any case 9 times out of 10 the children playing up the most are with mums who are not very good at listening or communicating with their children anyway.

Subject: RE: BS: I-pods and parenting
From: Mrs.Duck
Date: 29 Sep 10 - 04:47 AM

I recall a time many years ago when I found myself chatting away to a supermarket trolley. I was so used to talking to my babies when they were tiny that I automatically did it when I was pushing something vaguely pram like. I have worked for many years with young children who arrive at school with little or no conversational speech and poor vocabulary because their parents didn't talk to them. We never climbed stairs without counting and a trip to the shops or a walk around the block was accompanied by a running commentary, in the early days by me and then as the children got older thay joined in. They learned so much about their world from just those simple things and it gave them a curiosity and interest in finding out about the wider world in later years.

Subject: RE: BS: I-pods and parenting
From: GUEST,Patsy
Date: 29 Sep 10 - 05:37 AM

I know I miss those days. My youngest had started school at just turned 4 so during the summer holidays he was just leaving his babyhood as far as I was concerned. Before that we had so many conversations about what we could see from the bus explaining why people were doing such and such on the way and talking to him about what we should buy for dinner when we got to the supermarket but when he started school I was at a loss. I wanted to point out some horses in the field and show him what the birds were doing and I almost found myself talking to myself sometimes.

Subject: RE: BS: I-pods and parenting
From: GUEST,Silas
Date: 29 Sep 10 - 06:06 AM

Why not just leave parents alone?

Most of them do a very difficult job very well. They (we) all make mistakes from to time but the job is not made easier by interfering busybiodies.