The children are learning with iPad apps. We’ve finally succumbed to the evil-ness of Steve’s creation (I bet he must doing the laughter in his grave now). Yes, the iPad is a wonderful tool for work and leisure for busy adults, but for kids – no way. Kids should learn their ABCs from mum and dad and books and flashcards. They should learn how to count and trace and colour using pen and paper and stickers. Not with the iPad – that to me spells L.A.Z.Y for mama and papa.

Shame on you if you have to keep your kids entertained with the iPad while they are being fed or waiting for food to be served at restaurants. Shame on you if your kids have to hold on to their iPads to sit still in their car seats. Shame on you if you’ve allowed the apps to teach them A is for Apple and 3+3=6 and oranges are round and a triangle has three sides. Shame on you if you never bought a single box of colour pencils for your kids and took the pains to sharpen them one by one because your children’s idea of colouring is tapping the colour swatches on the ColourRama app to fill the pictures.

I believe in reading to my children, holding their hands to teach them penmanship (on paper, not on touch-screens), mixing water colours on the palette with a real paintbrush and singing songs out loud complete with actions and exaggerated expressions. I believe mealtime is family time and no TV (or iPad) should be allowed because we need to look into each other’s eyes – engage – and talk about our day – it was irrespective of age, we could all listen even if you were 21 months old (we shall talk about mealtime in another post). We must play real board games, touch actual chess pieces and roll a proper dice. We must learn how to speak our mother tongue from grandma and grandpa and mama and papa. We must teach our children the old-fashioned way.

So this prissy Mama shook her heads at parents who took out their pads to keep their children entertained and wagged her finger at mommies who bought apps to teach their children (cheaper than tuition, you know, a friend once told me). Fatherkao has always kept his iPad out of reach and the children never really knew it existed (they were busy entertaining themselves with real books, real card games, real flash cards, real colouring – intelligent and well-behaved, I know, aww, my wonderful kids) which was why we were shocked when one day, Ben walked over to fatherkao who was watching Top Chef Season Nine on his iPad and asked:

“What are you doing with your (*pause*) iPad?”

We gasped. Time stood still for three seconds before I locked eyes with him and asked him, “How did you know this is called (*pause*) iPad?”

He couldn’t give me an answer. I guess he just knew. Either by osmosis or he could connect two and two together and realised this device had a name (Ben is really an intelligent boy, by the way. He listens in to our conversations and can ask pretty smart questions). Or someone in daycare (gasp, someone brought an iPad to school!) must have told him so. So there it all began. He was always interested in the iPad and soon, we found ourselves downloading flashcards, counting games, shape sorters and alphabet tracing. Last night, he held the stylus for the first time and sat down (a good ten minutes in total) to trace the letter A, properly, stroke by stroke, on the iPad. Two days ago I have tried to hold his hand with a pen to get him to write the letter on paper but he could not even sit still for ten seconds.

But I have fought the good fight for three years and three months. I have bought and read books to my children and plastered the living room walls with their masterpieces done in pastel and crayons. I have bought them real stickers and got them to arrange the stickers in proper sticker books (which were very hard to find these days). I have blasted songs in mandarin and learned how to sing them before teaching them to my kids, complete with made-up actions and expressions. I have stayed away from technology (namely those beginning with the letter ‘i’) and kept them away from my children for as long as I could. Mama was cool but the iPad was way cool-er and there was no escaping the clutches of the ‘i’ Monster, who could transform your learning experience into one that was animated and funky and fun-ner than the ones you had with Mama.

I still believe in what I believe but Mama needs to check her competition out. So I am getting an iPad myself.