Are your children’s vaccines up to date?

Set a reminder

Please or to access all these features

Behaviour/development

Talk to others about child development and behaviour stages here. You can find more information on our development calendar.

DS, 2.11, becoming a bit obsessed with my laptop - help!!!!

7 replies

StrikeUpTheBand · 04/02/2010 14:50

Hi,

My DS is 3 next month but is quite able at number and reading-related things and catches on quite quickly. I would sometimes put CBeebies on the laptop for him and I would press the buttons and he would tell me what to press (i.e. a group activity). It became apparent that he'd been watching me and while I was bfing our newborn he was mostly controlling it himself (things like Alphablocks games, Big and Small games etc). Great, I thought, oh how clever...etc!

However, it is starting to go a bit pear-shaped as although he is very good when he's on it (I only let him sometimes, for about 20 minutes, usually while I am getting the baby to sleep as he is quite a noisy child and will go racing up and down the room making noise otherwise) he is very rude about getting off the thing, and will claim it is his computer and it's "horribled" if I am checking an email or even looking up an address before setting off somewhere. Yesterday he threw a tantrum because I needed to look at bus timetables to get to a music group with him and was pulling my fingers out of the way and getting angry. He is at the moment having time out for a similar 'offense' after he threw an inflatable toy at me in frustration when I wanted to check if someone had bought my item on ebay yet.
Any suggestions? I was thinking of removing the laptop completely during the day, but I sometimes do need it to look things up or just to relax for a few minutes while he is playing with something else.

OP posts:
Are your children’s vaccines up to date?
StrikeUpTheBand · 04/02/2010 14:53

By the way, I left my laptop on but locked the other day and came in from the kitchen to find him logged into my guest account and typing "cb..." into Google . Time to lock my guest account maybe?!

OP posts:
StrikeUpTheBand · 06/02/2010 13:55

Really? Not a single reply?

I'll get me coat then....

OP posts:
meandjoe · 07/02/2010 12:21

Bump... no suggestions but we can't have you getting your coat and slinking off unanswered!! FWIW my ds (2.6) is same with anything I am doing.. if I am watching TV suddenly it's his TV and he must have Mickey Mouse on and the computer is always a battleground to get him off the damn thing. I use a lot of distraction techniques just to get him to comply with anything really! Think you can only be firm and hope it's a phase!

OhYouBadBadKitten · 07/02/2010 12:30

I'd put a password protect on it.

At that age dd and I used to share the computer using a timer to denote whos turn it was

jamaisjedors · 07/02/2010 12:33

Not sure what you want to know exactly?

Both DS are very into the computer, DS2 is a similar age to yours and can grab and drop, double click, do puzzles on line etc.

I prefer him to do that than watch telly (which he also does).

Do you know poissonrouge.com? Much better than cbeebies for that age, no need to be able to read, it's all intuitive.

I have also used a timer....

And if they refuse to get off I say they won't be able to go on again.

JamesAndTheGiantBanana · 07/02/2010 12:35

Occasionally I google things like pictures/videos of steam trains, zebras etc if I want to show or explain something to ds (2.6) but I don't let him use the laptop in any way himself and I can't see it happening any time soon. He's already addicted to sodding cbeebies, I don't need him getting addicted to the website too!

Imho I don't think small children can use computers responsibly, and that means the content they look at, the amount of usage, the concept of shared access AND respect for the hardware. (Ds pulled some keys off my old laptop, we almost lost one)

I would ban it to be honest. I understand that it's a good distraction for when you're breastfeeding, but could you perhaps buy him a toy laptop, or a special box of books/puzzles/toys that only come out when you're bf?

JamesAndTheGiantBanana · 07/02/2010 12:39

By the way, I'm not trying to be holier-than-thou, my ds really does watch far too much tv, and I'm going to be bf soon myself (NO idea what I'm going to do with ds while that happens!)

New posts on this thread. Refresh page