My friends were shocked. How could I put that thing in a room
with my children? Had I locked them up with a rabid Rottweiler?
Nope. I'd let the kids (aged three and five) have their own
Ok, first of all, full disclosure: moving my old Mac Mini from the study down to the playroom did mean that I
had an excuse to buy myself a nice shiny new computer. But that
cute little Apple box that had served me well for over five years
(yes it's a PowerPC) was really starting to show its age and I was
increasingly finding that newer applications just wouldn't run on
However, that wasn't the reason why I thought it was a good idea
to donate it to the playroom. I really believe that it's essential
that young children are exposed to computing technologies and are
given the opportunity to master them at an early age. Being able to
use a mouse and keyboard are as vital as learning joined up
My son's school is pretty good at integrating ICT into the curriculum and we've even had some homework tasks that
specifically involve doing things with a computer. So encouraging
and facilitating that at home feels right to me.
I asked my friend why she was so concerned about having the
computer readily accessible. She has kids almost the same age as
mine and I'd thought she would appreciate the benefits too.
Naturally her main worry was that the kids would be exposed to
all sorts of evils and horrors that lurk on the internet. I pointed
out that letting the kids use a computer and letting them go online
were different things.
Having said that, the one in the playroom is connected to my
home Wi-Fi but I've taken a few simple steps to try to prevent them
easily stumbling upon undesirable content. As it happens, my oldest
son is still young enough that his Google searches never fail to include the keywords "star wars"
My friend's other concern was that using computers was
inherently a less virtuous activity than other things that children
could be doing. I have to disagree. Why is typing up a story worse
than writing it by hand? How is using Sumopaint to draw a
picture less creative than using pens and crayons?
As with all aspects of parenting there must be a balance. I
wouldn't let my kids sit all day in front of the computer when they
could be outside destroying my flower beds. But in the cold winter
months I reckon it is perfectly reasonable to pass some of the time
on the MiniMac.
There's also no denying that there are some good educational
resources online. I'd actually prefer my youngest son was
investigating the Cbeebies website rather than sat watching it on
TV while I'm cooking the tea. And in fact one of my oldest son's
favourite sites is Google's Ngram viewer, which lets you plot graphs of the popularity of
words and phrases based on how often they have occurred in a corpus
That seems pretty geeky to me. I don't know who he gets it
Richard Hayler is one of Wired.co.uk's new GeekDads!
Do you allow your kids free access to a computer and the Internet?