View Poll Results: What gender is (are) your child(ren)?

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  • Boy(s)

    15 40.54%
  • Girl(s)

    6 16.22%
  • Both (even)

    10 27.03%
  • More boys

    3 8.11%
  • More girls

    3 8.11%
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Thread: The Parenting Thread

  1. #351
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    4th Jan 2015
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    Do you think kids and parents these days no longer see an importance or respect for toys?
    I find myself wondering can we as parents be too pro toys/imaginative play? Am I too pro-toys and "old fashioned" in my thinking?

    I've always encouraged my kids to play from a young age. I try to give them home environments - their rooms and our lounge since we don't have a back yard in an apartment - where they always have access to different things they can play and create with.
    My son gets hassled for playing with toys by some of his friends and I often get harassed by parents for allowing him to have so much play time as I don't put him into classes every day after school. But my son derives so much sheer pleasure from his toys - both from collecting them and creating vivid and amazing imaginary stories with them I can't possibly fathom how playing with toys can ever be bad for any child or why parents would condemn it.

    My son had a couple of friends come over for his 9th birthday. He took them down to his room to see his Transformers and asked "do you want to play Transformers or lego?"
    They said "No" and came to me and asked "what's your wifi password?"
    I was shocked and my son was disappointed.
    I put my foot down and said no digital devices for at least an hour and 1/2 to which the 2 friends basically sat in the middle of my lounge and started saying "I'm BORED! Your apartment is so BORING!"
    (Ask anyone who's been to my place and they'll tell you it's a fantasy world of Transformers, lego, board games, art and craft and books... a couple of our friends children and my son's schoolmates NEVER want to leave when it's time for them to go...)
    My son tried for 20 minutes to get the boys to play with him. I even offered to take them to one of the local outdoor playgrounds to run around. My offer was rejected with "We never do that. No one likes going outside in HONG KONG. That's stupid. We only play iPad!"
    Eventually after 45 minutes of their stubbornness I relented and said they could use digital devices but no wifi until after lunch purely because they were making my son miserable and I hoped they would interact with one another even if it was comparing results on games.
    Ironically my son got bored of playing on the iPad about 30 minutes later and ended up going off to play Transformers in his room on his own because he thought that was "more fun". The other 2 sat on the floor playing on their iPads not interacting at all aside from when I gave them lunch.
    At the end of their visit I asked their mums whether they ever played and told the mums their kids didn't want to go to a playground. The mums just shrugged and looked at me funny, smiled and took their kids home.

    I think what irks me is (in my circles anyways) the parents who criticise me the most for "letting my son play too much" are the ones who have children that spend every waking non school hour on an ipad or some other digital device to the point if we are out at a family lunch the child will often demand they need to go home (and they will feign being sick in order to ensure they go home only to be perfectly well enough to sit on a computer as soon as they are through their front door for 5 hours straight)... I don't criticise the parents for their choices as I know we all have our own opinions and coping mechanisms and challenges but I'd rather have a son who isn't reliant on technology all the time and I wish parents here would respect that too. My kids do have digital devices but we have rules and limitations on use.

    What are other parents perspective on toys, play and digital devices?

  2. #352
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    7th Oct 2015
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    I'm not a parent, but obviously I've been around enough friends/parents and have my own thoughts:

    1. Having grown up around toys and having an imagination which still runs wild today, I'd want my kids to enjoy play time with toys and role-playing.
    2. Kids move onto different types of toys as they get older. I find it hard to believe that in Hong Kong of all places, kids aren't playing with some form of toys one way or another. All them toy stores - Gundam, Transformers, Macross, so much to play with! And it caters for all ages.
    3. I was talking with my partner during our HK trip (loved it!) about how hard it is being a parent and growing up in Hong Kong. Working long hours, seeing so many kids being looked after by grandparents or maids, and the expectation that kids should be enrolled in a bucketload of extracurricular activities. I'm looking at it from an ABC perspective of course.
    4. I can see how digital technology has been a blessing and curse for parents in places like HK. It would be very easy to keep your kid occupied in a tiny apartment by sticking them in front of a screen, rather than taking them out to a communal space.

  3. #353
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    "Imagination is more important than knowledge."
    - Albert Einstein

    Children learn through play. I often find toys and board games far more entertaining that video games because they allow you to exercise your imagination much more. I get bored of video games very quickly, but I can play with toys forever. When you play with a video game, your fantasy experience is limited to whatever the construct of the game is. For example, when you play Transformers Devastation, you are restricted to the characters that the game allows you to play (wanna be a Decepticon? Too bad!), as well as the moves that the game has built. The story, environments, weapons, abilities etc. are all pre-programmed. When you play with toys, the only limit is your imagination.

    Those kids who came to your son's birthday sound incredibly rude and disrespectful. I would've told them that they had two choices: Transformers and Lego. Want to play with devices? Not an option, pick again. Refuse to pick? Then play with nothing. Complain about the place being boring? Ask them if they would like their parents to be contacted to be sent home. Don't let the door hit you on the way out.

    It frustrates whenever we go out and see other kids just sitting around playing or watching devices. Just about a week ago we were at a restaurant, and at another table was a baby and the parents had shoved their phone on the table in front of the infant to let him watch something while they dined. Whhaaaaaaaaa?!? How about engaging your child in conversation? All too often I find that parents use electronic devices as shut up devices. They're like portable idiot-boxes; give it to the kid and it shuts them up. You don't need to engage with them as a parent, let the machine do the "parenting" for you. Excuse me for just a moment while I do this...


    And there are genuine concerns about the dangers of over-exposing children to devices, including having a negative impact on concentration and literacy. Some university academics have noticed that students are becoming increasingly worse at retaining knowledge. A lot of kids today are so used to just Googling everything that they don't keep the knowledge in their heads.
    Toxic effects of social media
    Warning on dangers of toddlers using iPads too soon
    Are iPads and tablets bad for young children?
    10 reasons why iPads in schools are dangerous
    Experts warn of dangers with children using technology
    10 Reasons why you shouldn't let your child play with smartphones or iPads

    Even at the high school level, we've noticed an increasing trend of kids who are outright school refusers, often hopeless addicted to technology. They refuse to come to school because they can't bear to stop playing with their tech. Schools then have to spend countless hours negotiating with parents, counsellors, psychiatrists etc. to try and get the child to come back to school, and this can often be a very long and drawn out process that can take months because we have to ween them off the technology and get them to gradually return to real life. Many students may just come to school for only one period a day for maybe one or two days a week for the first month, then we gradually increase the number of hours and days that they attend school. Maybe a term or entire semester later they might be ready to rejoin society. I'm not even making this up, and I've seen this happen multiple times. Parents are often distraught and even in tears because their child won't leave the house... sometimes not even their bedroom. This has become an increasing problem in Japan and now we're seeing it happen with Aussie kids.

    Now I'm not saying that smart technology is the sole cause and blame for this sort of thing; it's a complex problem. But it certainly doesn't help. And other studies have shown that overexposure to technology can be detrimental to a child's literacy. There are also health problems too; the increasing use of technology is, of course, part of an increasingly sedentary lifestyle. Kids are less physically active which leads too all kinds of health issues. You can bring your toys with you outdoors and play with them. Heck, I took my Legends Class TFP Breakdown with me when I went snorkeling in the Great Barrier Reef.

    Now I'm not saying that children should necessarily be completely insulated from technology. I personally don't feel the need to explicitly expose our daughter to tech because she's just surrounded by it so much that she inevitably gets exposed to it every day. It's the same with how we also don't speak to her in English - and yet English is her most dominant language because, living in Australia, she is completely immersed in the English language. Similarly kids are just immersed in technology that she can pick up on how to use tech without us having to explicitly expose her to it. They have iPads and IWBs at her school anyway. Some would say that balance is key. My cousin and his wife have a weekly timetable which clearly outlines how many hours a week their son is allowed to use his iPad, so that might be another way to approach it. But it astounds me how many parents just give their kids unfettered and unrestricted access to technology and then end up in tears in the school office when their child is facing a myriad of social, psychological and behavioural problems. As stupid as it sounds, some parents actually need to be told to stop letting their children do/have whatever they want!

    While the technology is new the problem is ages-old. Lack of boundaries = problematic kids. It is possible to address this problem, but as I said, it takes a lot of time, energy, funding and other resources. Not to mention that the child significantly falls behind in school during those months spent in self-imposed social isolation.

  4. #354
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    If we're out with friends and the kids are all together we let out kids take their iPads with them so they can "socialise" with their friends because they'll all talk and interact as they play games, but if we're out as a family we virtually never let them bring their digital devices (although my son often brings a Transformer or 2).
    If we're out with friends and we don't allow our kids to bring their digital devices (which does happen from time to time because we don't feel they need them ALL the time) our kids tend to be excluded or spend their time looking over their friends shoulders as they play on their devices. It's a catch 22 when balancing common sense with peer pressure.

    I'm glad I'm not the only one who sees this reliance/addiction to devices as alarming.
    As a parent I don't ever want my kids to end up like that (although not as easy now my daughter is in Y7 here and required to use a laptop for EVERYTHING which drives me nuts).
    As a parent I don't know how to engage with other parents who are pro-digital devices or more often the "I don't care/babysitting device" parents about it. I don't want to be that lecturing parent because Primus knows I get lectured by other parents enough myself but some of these kids are just scary and you can see exactly what Gok's describing with behavioural issues creeping in. The parents unfairly blame it on the school or teachers here... and seem to think the school should fix it but it goes deeper than that doesn't it.

  5. #355
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    On an unrelated topic: Hooray for head lice!

  6. #356
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    Buzzcut for Death Cobra?

    Peer pressure's a funny thing. At my daughter's school, every other parent seems to have this habit of carrying their children's schoolbags for them when dropping off or picking them up from school. Today I saw one mother struggling as she was carrying a 3 year old in one arm and her 7 year old's school bag in the other. My daughter initially tried to get me to carry her bag, but the stock response was: 「お父さんは奴隷じゃないよ」 ("Daddy's not your slave."). She's given up now and just carries her own bag.

  7. #357
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    Not a parent myself, but having lots of interaction with children everyday, I find it concerning the reliance on technology. Kids here in Japan get anxious when they don't have their phones on them. It's crazy. Theyll be in a group on the train, all sitting down and playing various games, but rarely talking.

    What I find rather interesting is that social phone games are a big thing here. It'll be some puzzle game, but like a multiplayer puzzle game. They'll be playing the same game together. Mobile games are HUGE here.

    Personally I think it is having a bad effect on kids here, many of the kids in my school lack creative thinking.

    I broke my phone and was phoneless for about 2 weeks and I thought I'd be in trouble (google maps is handy in a foreign country). But having to rely on my wits was fine. It was like the old days. Plus I rather enjoyed not having the phone around, my whatsapp and line messages are annoying and intrusive more often than not.

    Final comment, when I worked in Aus at the cinema, I naturally worked with teenagers and I found it amusing that many of them couldn't imagine a world without the internet. ReallY? One asked me "How did you live?" <- She wasn't the sharpest tool in the shed, but even so, it's not that much of a stretch...

    I'm a big fan of limiting tech contact and if I had kids I think I'd be implementing the same tactics as Bladestorm. I kind of feel sorry for your son's friends. They'll be socially stunted I think.

  8. #358
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    When I confiscate a student's phone I occasionally have the student say, "But how can I live without my phone?" and I say, "The same way your parents did when they were in school. And they obviously survived or you wouldn't be here now." The stupid thing is, sometimes it's the student's parent who are calling their kids on their phones during school hours. What's wrong with calling the school office in the event of an emergency (which is what they're supposed to do)? And if it's not an emergency, send a text. It's amazing how some parents feel that they're entitled to disrupt an entire lesson just so that they can get a message to their child straight away. Confiscating phones just for one lesson doesn't seem to have much effect now because kids know that they'll get the phone back by the end of the lesson. So now with repeat offenders I keep the phone until the end of lunch or the end of the school day.

    Phone games here are big too. A few days ago I saw a boy not wearing his school tie, so I told him to put it on. He and his friends had to all pause their multiplayer game and they all waited while he put his tie on. The funny thing is that this kid wasn't particularly adept at tying his tie so it took ages, and by the time they unpaused their game the roll call bell went and they had to put their phones away.

  9. #359
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    Quote Originally Posted by Demonac View Post
    On an unrelated topic: Hooray for head lice!
    Thankfully I've only had that experience once when my daughter was in Year 1... but we got a school warning email yesterday about it doing the rounds at my son's school so it must be bad at the moment. There's a tea-tree spray that works wonders for girls with long hair to discourage the little buggers which I think might be an aussie brand.

    On the subject of school bags my kids schools have a policy of the child must carry their own bag which my children have always done. I too use the "I'm not your slave" line with my kids LOL).
    Unfortunately what happens is the kid walks out of the gates then throws their bag at their helper or parent because once out of school grounds the teachers can't say anything and the helper is their packhorse while they blissfully walk ahead like lord muck. My son regardless of whether I or my helper pick him up has to carry his own school bag home. I've told him if he ever disrespects me or our helper like that he'll be in big trouble. Unfortunately I think our children's generation are going to have some hard truths to face on owning up to reality when they get older.

  10. #360
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    The dangers of strapping your child into a car wearing thick jackets; the same principles apply to regular seat belts and also for adults as well as child seats.

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