Tuesday, November 28, 2006
High Tech Toys for Young Children...
Are you considering high tech toys for your children for Christmas? You may want to reconsider...
From laptops for the under-fives to interactive dolls, technology is driving the childhood experiences of the next generation - and nobody knows what the long-term effects will be.
Critics are concerned about a variety of potential dangers, including shorter attention spans brought on by fast-moving objects on screens to the frequency emissions.
Some experts suggest that the alarming rise in autism may be related to screen-based viewing by very young children.
Despite the concerns, toy manufacturers have never had it so good, with a market of time-poor parents who want to give their offspring a head-start in the new childhood brain-race, which can involve an expensive private-school education and after-school tutoring from the age of six.
There's no doubt that the market is growing: Australia is officially in the grip of a "baby bounce", with the national fertility rate on the increase and more babies born last year than in any year since 1993.
But while baby-boomer children had quarter-acre blocks filled with siblings and neighbouring children to play with outside, the new baby-bounce kids are cocooned indoors and in need of constant entertainment.
If you believe the tech-toy hype, early intervention is the key to breeding a smarter child, and the earliest schoolroom for the precocious progeny of pushy parents is the womb. There are now gadgets designed to fast-track the developing mind of in-utero child.
In addition, a study recently released proves that there is just as substantial child development happening with building blocks as with some of the new "high tech" learning toys for young children...
Forget all the media products for babies on the market and go for the classic building blocks, suggests a new study linking playing with blocks with improved language acquisition in toddlers.
The Child Health Institute at the University of Washington released results Thursday from a six-month clinical trial showing middle- and lower-income children 1.5 to 2.5 years of age who engage in block play scored significantly higher on an internationally recognized scale measuring toddlers' language development.
The team of researchers, led by pediatrician Dr. Dimitri Christakis, also found on any given day these children were more than 80 per cent less likely to watch television than children in the control group, who did not receive blocks.
Noting "an increasing number of media-based products are making unsubstantiated claims they can make children smarter, more literate, or more musical," the study takes direct aim at companies like Walt Disney's Baby Einstein Co., which markets a line of DVDs for newborns and toddlers.
"It's a critical period in a young child's development, and everybody is trying to optimize that development," Christakis said in an interview.
"Parents are inundated with messages that are totally unsubstantiated and totally ungrounded in cognitive theory. This study tried to demonstrate experimentally that there are particular toys that do help cognitive development. The burden should be on toy manufacturers to prove their claims."
