To wish I'd never bought my children Ipads?

[Goodnurseorgremlin]

I have six year old twins. They have never had ipads/tablets until this Christmas where I relented and bought them an ipad each.

Worst thing I ever did. I'm quite strict. with them They are only allowed an hour on a morning on weekends and same after school weekdays. It's still driving me insane. Pre ipad they would have been watching TV or playing at this time on a morning. Now they are glued to their ipads watching absolute brain dead kiddie trash on YouTube. I've had to send them to the kitchen for my sanity.

Can anyone relate? Is it too late to tell them santa needs the bloody things back?

It wouldn't be MN without judgement, and exaggeration! No tech until 15 of course! 😂

And this sort of tech-use also causes ADHD-like symptoms which are “acquired” rather than hard-wired in the brain.

https://neurolaunch.com/vast-adhd/

Get your kids off those iPads.

I agree, it isn't an either/or situation. There is a balance. They can still do a range of activities.

It's very, very, very simple.

Take the ipads away, for good.

You are their parent and they deserve for you to look after their mental well-being, as well as their physical. Admit to yourself the ipads don't contribute anything to their lives, and reverse the mistake

I have an 8 year old and no ipads allowed at all. Just TV. I have no idea if other kids have them or not as I don't care. He isn't getting one because I see no benefit. The school set stuff on apps but I have told them we won't be doing any homework set on any apps so if they have homework to set it needs to be on pen and paper. I've taught him all he needs to know via flashcards and old fashioned methods like workbooks. He is exceeding expectations in all areas. Screens make kids lazy in my opinion.

Does he do any typing? They have IT at school, so it is important they have this skill. You can get educational A.I apps where the child types in questions, and it answers; it's a sort of fact finding mission eg, Egyptians. The school have just given this, my child is the same age. Imo you're leaving him behind tech wise. The world is computer orientated eg, high school/university/offices etc. When will he start to learn typing?

Of course ‘the judgement is out in force’ OP. What the hell were you thinking? Six?! Why you’d encourage this is absolutely beyond me when all the evidence points to how damaging this is. Grow up and parent properly ffs.

I’m not surprised by this

Rhiannon93 · Today 10:53

When I was a kid I didn’t have an iPad but I had an educational tablet that was loaded with educational games and interactive books

A Leap-pad? Think they’re still available.

What is the problem? I remove devices from my dc (20 y.o) and my husband when necessary.

My youngest will be 11 in summer, no Ipad. Our Kumon tutor is trying to convince me to buy one for educational benefits, but I am not giving in for as long as I can. Because I have lots of experience with my older boys. Bought him a smart phone in September, and in October took it back. It was a huge mistake. I was thought a mean mum for a month or two, but I can cope.
You are in the driving seat. You understand the situation better than your children.

I learned typing in Uni but I expect that by then it will be redundant as it will be all voice controlled..... tech moves so fast there us literally no point teaching an 8 year old any of it!

Take them off them. Sell them.

I went to university 2003, and even then, all assignments were typed from the very beginning. They now use computers in secondary school, so not as long as you may think. They also have IT in primary. I'm surprised your dc doesn't have that now?

Ideally, just take them away.

Easier - turn the internet off and shrug your shoulders and say they must be broken, pretend to send them off to be fixed, after a couple of weeks just say that it's looking like they can't be fixed. Oh well never mind, who wants to play pirates?

Leappads are very expensive for what they are. And the software is a complete rip off.

I can totally see why they are no longer a thing. For the same price you can buy a proper tablet, use parental controls and access millions of apps and games for a fraction of the price.

In fact I think some leapfrog apps made it to the Google Play store.

Awful. Learning is so much stronger when done by hand.

It’s not educational though is it. It’s just educating your kids to be passive consumers of screens. Take the iPads away today and raise children who learn how to amuse themselves with toys, paper and crayons, books, dolls, dress-up, crafting … just be a proper parent, you know, the kind of decent parent that there were loads of BEFORE screens.

You could also consider that you are doing your children a favour by not introducing them to the frustration of always wanting more screen time.

Agreed, you can create a google family link where you oversee and permission everything, as well as setting screen time limits there, so it automatically shuts off.
It is the same with mobile phones, you can completely lock them down with very basic functionality, and linked to you/old phone etc. They can call a parent walking home from secondary school, school lock them up through the day.

This

wtf? You remove devices from your husband? That’s a whole other thread surely

On the YouTube kids app you can set it so you have to actively add content that they can watch.
On ours I have literally added 3 channels that the kids can see.

We learnt by hand, short hand in lectures and seminars, with lots of library books and journals, with typed assignments. There was nothing awful about it! That was 2003. It is 2025 and a very different world now. In secondary school, I'll be very surprised if you can ban your son from using computers and typing at school.

You need to lose the charger

I was at Uni 10 years earlier and everything was typed then and a PC at the time was the best part of a grand.
I bought an Amiga 1200!