Tablet for 3 year old? Too young?

[totallycluelessoverhere]

DH wants to buy our 3 year old a tablet for Christmas. Possibly the amazon kids one. Is this too young to have a tablet of his own?
And does anybody have any preference over which kids tablet is the best in the market. We won’t be spending more than £100 on it.

We've brought my 3.5 yr old the Amazon kids one for Christmas. It's cheaper at Argos at the moment ( we got hers yesterday and it was cheaper in there)

Your plan isn’t a bad one but can I suggest you regularly DONT let him use it on the car trip? I know they get bored but this is a regular thing- ‘bored’ is essential for brain development and creative / intuitive thinking. Whoever said much better to be on a tablet than looking out the window is very wrong. Children need to be comfortable with unstimulated time, where they have to settle on thinking about something.
I have a 3yo. We have apps on our iPad. We wouldn’t get him one as we want it to be distinctly not his, an occasional thing. Mainly it’s an occasional treat on holidays. All the apps are carefully selected and the reading ones we do with him- I don’t mind working together on screens but it’s still maybe once a month tbh! We allow free rein on watching (preselected downloaded)shows for long travel. The regular car ride you describe wouldn’t count but plane trips do, especially long ones. He will have already driven to airport, and been in airport a few hours before getting on plane and has similar plus perhaps trains etc depending on where we are going, it’s exhausting. I’m ok for him to relax watching something then. Basically I think their brains don’t need them.

My DS is about the same age and my MIL has insisted on getting him a kids fire for Christmas. I would rather have held off for another year or so but apparently we aren’t allowed to tell her what she can buy 😡. We can however limit how much he gets to use it so it will definitely be fairly minimal.
He already uses our iPad very occasionally but only for very short periods of time to watch a couple of programmes we have downloaded so it is always within our control. That feels important to me, that he can’t spend as much time as he wants on it. I definitely worry that it becomes a slippery slope to using it all the time.

My dc got interested in using an iPad around age of six. They have had web based homework since reception but they weren't interested in apps etc. Now we let them use iPad for fun every now and then (6&8).

In long car journeys we play "eye spy" or listen music. Sometimes dc play imaginative games with teddies too. They do wind each other up and we have had a fair share of arguments in backseats, but that's life.

My kid is getting an amazon kids for her 2nd birthday. She reads loads, does loads of puzzles and is speaking well for her age. Don’t see a problem with it personally. She will use learning bits and bobs and be supervised. She won’t have it all day.

kids are losing the ability to be bored.and this has an impact on behaviour, on brain development,on imagination and being creative.let them be bored I nthe car and then find things to do or just have time in their own heads.let them be bored in restaurents and at home its when their imagination and creative side flys.
they don't need a tv in the car.
I see their uses.but the downsides to this new culture for me put me far more off them than for them.

DD got one for her 2nd birthday from PIL after I'd mentioned a leap pad in passing

She'll be three in February and uses it maybe once a month.. although I must admit I'm terrible for "forgetting" to charge it.

I've found some apps are really good in terms of holding her interest whilst still interacting with me (mainly phonics ones) while Peppa fucking Pig very quickly got deleted.

Wow, I can’t believe some of these responses.

Ds is 3. She has an amazon tablet. She plays on it sometimes, watches tv on it sometimes. She also draws, plays with a million toys, bakes, runs around, goes to the park, goes swimmming, reads 3-4 books with us a night, is ahead developmentally and socially, and is generally a messy whirlwind.

It’s fine OP. Ignore the pearl clutches.

I grew up with a computer (that I was obsessed with), game it’s, a drag mega drive and a tv in my room.

I’m a married doctor with 3 degrees (although admittedly on the chubby side )

200 years ago people were hysterical about women reading novels 🤷‍♀️

FYI most of the studies about the damage screen time does has found that it is parental neglect and disinterest that does harm, not the screens themselves

HTH

Game boy and sega mega drive!

If only all the screen time hadn’t made my finger so fat

When my daughter was 3 i was in two minds of whether she was too young for tablet because you hear all these stories of how addictive it can be, anyways i decided to buy her one and there's so many things you can put into place e.g. parental lock. I think when making a decision you should weigh out the pros and cons and decide how beneficial it will be for your child. I came to realise it can be beneficial when you're travelling, or you're in a place where they're going to be bored, eg doctors appointment. Good luck hope you make the right decision

My eldest got an innotab age 3 but we weren’t that impressed with it. We then got both children a Kirio tablet which was ok but the younger daughter was only about 2 at the time and it got broken a lot. They then kind of just died and the apps weren’t great. We invested in an amazon fire for my eldest when she was about 7 and it’s been the best thing for her and we eventually replaced the youngest’s tablet with one when she was 5. We got the older child a normal kindle and put it in a decent case as she manages not to smash screens. We paid extra for the kids one for the youngest as she had broken the screen loads on her other tablet. It has a 2 year replacement guarantee for if they break it and it comes with a subscription to kids unlimited for a year. It’s beem brilliant. My only issue is that there’s a lot of apps not available on amazon fire and also some apps that become unuseable - both kids had Furby toys for Christmas and worked great on their fires and then suddenly stopped as the Furby people no longer support the fire with their app meaning their Furby toys are now pretty much useless!

I don’t think 3 is too young as longs as you get decent apps. My youngest had a tonne of reading apps and number apps. She’s an August birthday now in year 2 and orettt much top of her class. Can’t put that down to the tablet but it hasn’t stopped her ability to use an pencil and paper. She’s quite a good gamer too whereas her older sister can not manage games and gets bored with them. She uses her fire for watching the i player.

What’s good about the fire is you can set them to log off when their time is up. This had made a difference to me telling them to finish up.

Just be sensible with usage. By the way my kids play with real toys, ride bikes, we go camping and geocaching, they belong to clubs and take part in lots of social activities. They literally get their tablets for about half an hour before bed on the nights they get up to their rooms early enough. Sometimes they find time on a weekend for a little bit of useage to chill out.

This thread is sad.

Our dc have had them since 2 and we wouldn’t be without them but we travel by plane a lot and that’s the only time they use them. It turns them into monsters at home, I have no idea why but they can’t use them. We took them away a few years ago and never looked back. I think that if you can limit your ds’ time and he’s fine with that then no problem with it. The puzzles and games can be good. I hate seeing kids out in buggies or at restaurants with them but they’re useful for certain times and it could be argued better than staring at the tv depending on the apps you use.

Well we made the decision to get one. DH got the kids fire edition on his way home from work yesterday. It’s actually much better than I expected and as he has used our iPad occasionally I definitely prefer the kids fire for a child because we can restrict all the content to just stuff suitable for under 5’s. He not be able to click on anything except the fire unlimited kids apps and videos because We set it up that way and it has been limited to a maximum of one hour a day and will only be given to him for the twice weekly long journeys and one day at the weekend. Obviously the one hour limit won’t even cover half of each journey but we think an hour is enough and then he can occupy himself / be bored for the other 90 mins of each journey.
I know lots of people will think we have made a wrong and lazy decision but we are happy with the decision and are comfortable knowing that the tablet will only be used for a tiny fraction of his weekly awake time.

are comfortable knowing that the tablet will only be used for a tiny fraction of his weekly awake time.

You sound like a sensible poster, and I really hope this remains the case. However, this hasn't been my experience of those I know have bought tablets. Now they have them, they seem to be the default way of entertaining a child.

That is why we set a time limit now. It will just switch off at the end of the hour and will be too much faff to change - my husband who is the one likely to go over the limit is useless with technology and wouldn’t even know how to change the limit

That sounds like a good plan op. We tend to put the iPads in the glovebox for long car journeys and then only pull them out after 2-3 hours once we’ve exhausted looking out the window, playing I-spy, listening to music etc. Rather than giving them to the dc straight away as then it’s harder for them to give them up when time is up.

it's absolutely too young. There's so much they need to learn at that age WHY would you do this?? Trust me, you'll be battling over screen time soon enough. And as for the 'education' aspect, a reading game or alphabet game won't teach your child to read any better than giving them picture books to look at, buying flash cards or games, or actually reading with them.A maths game doesn't teach them to count as well as counting objects with them, or playing a cards game.
I work for an Ed Tech company, we make these products for older kids - there's a lot of evidence that tablets for young kids teach them to look for quick stimuli, affect their eyesight and attention spans and are used by parents as babysitting devices.
You have a choice, you can have that kid who can't sit through a Sunday lunch without needing a screen or you can have the kids who chat, eat and color, or play with their Lego or Shopkins at the table. In my experience you don't get both.

The other thing I would say, and this has been mentioned before, is that our research has shown that it's absolutely crucial that children are allowed to be 'bored' for their development and creativity and imagination. They need to learn how to create not consume and personal devices are damaging this.This is partly the reason we have decided to create stuff for schools only, and not direct to parents as consumers.
famously many of the execs at Google, Apple etc. are sending their kids to 'traditional' schools where tech devices aren't used and don;t allow their OWN children to own tablets...

My son can sit through a meal without a tablet (he’s not allowed it at mealtime) but I absolutely use it as a babysitting device.

And I dunno about it not teaching him. We’re taking a tablet break for a couple of days (because I have no doubt been overusing it) and he asked for his magnetic letters and then he went “where the o” looked for it “where the g” and then “where’s the d” and he put them “dog”. He’s not even 2 and a half and he completely unprompted wrote dog. I guess magnetic letters are very similar to the games he plays.

Like I feel genuinely bad he gets addicted to it but because I’m not using it now he’s had an hour of cartoons today because I needed to make sure he didn’t cause havoc while I did the housework. I need something to be a babysitter (and I’m sure you’ll say to “get him involved” in the chores but I HATE chores and if I “get him involved” they’ll take all day!)

That's probably the most honest post I've read in along time.

We got a tablet for our 3.5yr old DS last Christmas. Got the kids amazon fire one. It’s great, fab for long journeys and occupying him when he wakes at 6.30am. He doesn’t use it all day, usually a bit in the morning and evening to wind down after school. He uses a lot of the counting, adding and word apps. It updates age appropriate stuff aswell. We have replaced it one as it got jammed in the car door and cracked the screen. It’s free replacement to 2yrs afterwards. Would recommend it.

That’s the one we have gone for mummy.

timewounds thank you for the refreshingly honest post.
I think mostbparents are guilty at some point of using technology for babysitting purposes. I have been known to put on a nursery rhyme dvd to occupy a toddler whilst I run around and tidy a few things up and I reckon even most anti tech parents will have pit kids tv on at some point whilst they did a quick job.
We never ever have tv during mealtimes, we don’t have a tv in the dining room or kitchen and use that time to talk as a family. DH and I don’t use phones or any tech at mealtimes and don’t allow the teenagers to do so either and it has never been a problem so I can’t see it being an issue with the three year old either. One of the teenagers overuses technology but he just accepts that we don’t have tech at mealtimes.

@Timehealsallwounds - That was a very honest post, thankyou for sharing it!
I recognise our own family in it. When you have more than one child, you need something to 'babysit' at key times, i.e. making dinner, in order for the family to function. I really don't see the difference between a tablet or peppa pig on tv.

There's a world of difference between an hour on the tablet at dinner time in a day full of different activities, to a child sat on a tablet/watching tv/in their room alone for 12 hours a day, while the parents ignore them

Sort of feels like the 'nursery vs staying at home' argument. Traditionalists will always argue that the traditional/old way is the best, even when evidence of the advantages of nursery/limited access to a tablet are right n front of them. And make you feel like the world worst person for choosing to parent differently!

I take great please -shadenfreude- when our nct group get together, and my chocolate eating, tablet playing, nursery attending, non gently parented child is well behaved and bright, whilst the home schooled, organic eating, no screens gently parented children run riot

**disclaimer: despite above, my child can be as much of a shit if not more than anyone elses.