If you got tablets for your kids, how old were they when you got them?
A family member is interested in getting them for the girls’ 4th birthday. H and I honestly don’t see a need for them right now. But I am curious about what others have done
1.5ish? We don't have any other tablets in the house, for reference, so this would be our only option for something like that for her. 99% of the time we use it in the car to watch shows and that's it.
My kids are 11, 8 and 5. None of them have their own tablets. The big girls started using laptops for school in 2nd grade for school purposes but that is the only personal device they had until we gave my 11 yo a stripped down phone last month.
We do have an iPad that is mine but I have let them use it before to FaceTime people or do messenger kids. When they were toddlers I let them play Daniel tiger games on it on long plane rides and stuff.
I guess before you accept the gift I would think about what kinds of boundaries you want to have and whether you are up for the task of enforcing them. Personally that is not something I have the energy for so I would rather not even have it in the house.
"Hello babies. Welcome to Earth. It's hot in the summer and cold in the winter. It's round and wet and crowded. On the outside, babies, you've got a hundred years here. There's only one rule that I know of, babies-"God damn it, you've got to be kind.”
Mine don’t have their own personal use tablets. I have an iPad that I occasionally let them use like maybe 1-2 hours a week.
We never did the tablet in the car thing which looking back maybe we should have because there was lots of crying, but to be fair that crying was solidly in the baby/ infant stage, so maybe a tablet wouldn’t have fixed that anyway.
He started using a tablet around 3-4. We got him a Kindle Fire but it was awful (this was like 3 years ago, so maybe they’re better now). So we ended up passing down an older iPad mini when I got a new one. We are very clear that it’s not “his” iPad, it’s our iPad that we let him use.
DD started using my tablet pretty early--around 2.5/3. She was in speech therapy and there were a few apps her therapist recommended. Until then it hadn't been on my radar to let a young kid use one. At that age it was definitely an activity we did together though. I can't remember when she started using mine interdependently. 4 or 5 probably. At that point it was education apps and movies/tv shows for plane rides. It was pretty addictive for her at that age so we had to put limits around it.
DD has never had her own but honestly mine is basically hers. She's the only one that uses it.
My ILs were very pushy about getting my kids their own iPads and I held my ground, so H negotiated one shared kindle fire — the kids were 6 and 4 I think. I wish I hadn’t agreed to it. It was too young.
We had an ipad in a kid-proof case for calls with grandparents and put the Homer app on it just after age 3. It's the only app DD interacts with and it's mostly held her interest for a year now.
Post by keweenawlove on Aug 8, 2021 10:10:28 GMT -5
We got a kids kindle for DD on our adoption trip. She was almost 3. But we were trying to figure out parenting a toddler on a 3 week international trip so we needed all the reserves we could get!
This is super helpful. We may end up doing a long road trip in October, but we can decide then if we need them. I know they will just lead to huge meltdowns at this point.
For kids that didn't have tablets when younger, what did you do for long car rides/plane rides? Just asking because DD has always been a pretty poor traveler and I'm wondering if other people just suck it up, their kids are better travelers, or if you give them some other device.
Post by sillygoosegirl on Aug 8, 2021 13:56:52 GMT -5
She was 5, but the deciding factor was more to do with COVID rather than age. She probably still wouldn't have one now or on the horizon if it weren't for COVID... and probably would've had one younger if she was younger when the lockdowns started.
For kids that didn't have tablets when younger, what did you do for long car rides/plane rides? Just asking because DD has always been a pretty poor traveler and I'm wondering if other people just suck it up, their kids are better travelers, or if you give them some other device.
The vast majority of the long flights we've taken with DD there were built in movie things. We pretty much didn't do long car rides for years, because they sounded too horrible. Even now that she has a tablet, it barely gets used on long car rides because she gets motion sickness very easily. We've mostly read to her when the road was straight-ish, and listened to audiobooks when even the grownups would get car sick. Same on train travel... lots reading aloud, and some games too.
Mine were 5 and 2. We were moving across the country and They rode with me while H drove the other car. They use them a lot still 3.5 years later 🤷🏻♀️
For kids that didn't have tablets when younger, what did you do for long car rides/plane rides? Just asking because DD has always been a pretty poor traveler and I'm wondering if other people just suck it up, their kids are better travelers, or if you give them some other device.
Mine never had tablets in the cars. Care rides were difficult until age 2 maybe in terms of crying. After that it was more whining and them dropping things on the floor they couldn’t reach. We tried the toys, books, busy stuff for a while but as toddlers like I said they just dropped them. But whatever, it’s a toddler phase. Now they are 8 and 10 and they read in the car, look out the windows, play games.
For the airplane when they were older we did our own tablets or laptops that we used together so typically we would sit 2 and 2 and the parent/ child would watch the same thing. DH and DS would watch sports. A lot of times I read while DD watched something.
Every kid is different in terms of traveling. But if they are given a tablet at every opportunity then I guess they expect that, so it can be self fulfilling.
My kids have always had access to our hand-me-down iPads at around age 3? We got DS1 his own iPad last year with cell service because of remote learning…he was in fourth grade and 9 years old at the time. I would accept the gift and just make firm rules around access/content right at the start.
Edit: Any long car ride or airplane we’ve let the kids have tablets. But before 2 they weren’t that interested in them at all or for very long.
For kids that didn't have tablets when younger, what did you do for long car rides/plane rides? Just asking because DD has always been a pretty poor traveler and I'm wondering if other people just suck it up, their kids are better travelers, or if you give them some other device.
I don’t know what you count as a long car ride, but 2 year old DD regularly does a 2+ hour drive to/from the family cabin in the summer, and a few other longer drives for bigger trips (3-4 hours). We try to time driving over her nap (she’ll usually nap for at least an hour in the car), which helps, but for the other hour+ she amuses herself pretty well with other loud electronic toys (not tablets with screens, but VTech type stuff), water wow coloring books, stickers, and highlights magazines.
We’ve never given her a choice of a screen so for now she doesn’t even know it’s an option. 🤷♀️
(She was TERRIBLE about car rides as a baby though. Like screamed the entire car ride. It didn’t get better until she was a toddler. So there can be hope!)
DD stopped napping in the car sometime before she turned 1 and would get sick of any books/other activities after about an hour max so I got desperate 😭 got the tablet to prep for a plane ride that didn't happen thanks to covid, but ended up used to visit family etc
We let them use ours on plane rides. We don’t use screens in the car. But I guess we ended up w individual screens for Zoom school in fall 2020 at age 6. They rarely have access other than for school though.
For kids that didn't have tablets when younger, what did you do for long car rides/plane rides? Just asking because DD has always been a pretty poor traveler and I'm wondering if other people just suck it up, their kids are better travelers, or if you give them some other device.
My kids used to read books, stickers, drawing, cards, etc on trips. They didn’t know any better 🤷♀️
"Hello babies. Welcome to Earth. It's hot in the summer and cold in the winter. It's round and wet and crowded. On the outside, babies, you've got a hundred years here. There's only one rule that I know of, babies-"God damn it, you've got to be kind.”
My kids are 9&7, and they don't have tablets. We have one tablet in the house that we let them use very occasionally (like a long car ride). Giving them their own tablets has literally never been an idea that has crossed my mind.
For kids that didn't have tablets when younger, what did you do for long car rides/plane rides? Just asking because DD has always been a pretty poor traveler and I'm wondering if other people just suck it up, their kids are better travelers, or if you give them some other device.
We play a lot of car games, the three of us. And listen to a lot of kid music.
On planes, she’ll color or read, or we play family card games like Go Fish and Uno. Sometimes the planes themselves have entertainment.
We began bringing the iPad on planes a while ago, but it doesn’t have cellular so we don’t take it on car trips or to restaurants. I guess DD is fairly good about entertaining herself. She LOVES to draw and write stories so I can always count on that, at least.
We live overseas so bought my daughter one for long flights when she was around 3 - they only come out for long car / flights and have been invaluable honesty. My son got one around the same age but wasn't super interested in it until 4, now (at 5) it's magical.