It's Dangerous to Go Alone...

As you probably already know, we're a pretty solid family unit. We're working together today, to produce shared blog for both Pixel Bandits and Indy-Plays, as we think this subject works for both. As ever this blog will contain some epic synth, brought to you today by Silkworm, so press play over on the left.

We're quite lucky, in that myself and Mama Boba agree on pretty much everything we do when it comes to our baby boy. We're "gentle" parents (just read that as we're not total a**holes) and we pretty much always put our boy before ourselves, so it may seem odd to people that we send our 1.5 year old off on technology...

Well, almost anyway. We don't "send him off", we interact with him, with technology, and we both believe that it can be important. Obviously it's only healthy to keep everything in moderation, and we make sure that Indy gets a lot of regular play time as well, but we're both in agreement that as well as lovely wooden toys and messy play, it's important for kids to grow up outside of the technology ghetto.

When we were wee nippers, gaming was a treat. It still is in many respects, we enjoy playing as much as we did then (perhaps more) but with a kid, your time is severely reduced. Children growing up now though, will be using the latest advances throughout their whole lives and, much like reading with him and throwing messy Gelli all over the walls, we both enjoy gaming with him, and watching his progress.

He's a little information sponge at the moment (they all are!) and he was only just over a year old when he cottoned onto the fact that pressing the big shiny button on the controller makes the guide come up on the television... he has advanced since then, from simply being able to unlock my phone to being able to unlock it, go into kid's mode and then choose his favourite games, he can even get a pretty good score on some of them.

Yes, I agree it's important to do other things with your child, very important. And I would never say you should throw a tablet at your child so you don't have to deal with them, but I DO think that using it with them can help them to develop all sorts of processes, from motor function to problem solving. Certainly, teaching him that 2+2=4 is vital, but enabling and helping him to learn how to learn is what I love.

Also... there's just a possibility that I am really looking forward to passing on the games which I loved as a child... showing him the Flashback videos on our channel is all well and good, but seeing him play them, I think, will be awesome.

If you want to know more about our play activities with young Indiana, head over to Mama Boba's Blog, dedicated to her company, Indy-Plays