Don't use the iPad as a pacifier for your baby says VANESSA FELTZ
EXPERTS used to rebuke parents for taking the easy route to peace by handing their babies a dummy or using the TV as a babysitter.
A toddler with a tablet - this child may never learn how to deal with boredom
Now there’s no need. Instead of sucking contentedly on rubber teats or being parked in front of the television set, babes in arms are being handed a far more effective pacifier.
It comes in many guises – iPad, phone or laptop – and it brings instant tranquillity.
It’s convenient – mum or dad always has a phone at his or her fingertips.
For heaven’s sake stop it, mums, dads, grannies and grandpas
It’s cheap and, unlike dummy sucking or interminable telly watching, it can even be passed off as a positive, actively enhancing baby’s potential technological acumen.
Parents hesitate to hand their children fizzy drinks or chocolate bars in public. They don’t fancy braving the hostile looks or outpourings of criticism.
There is, however, no similar compunction about passing a pre-school child a tablet or iPhone.
Parents will actively draw attention to their baby’s hand eye co-ordination, extoll in glowing terms his ability to access apps and brag for all the world to hear about his Angry Birds record.
Children are not given the chance to be bored, grow fractious or poke a mange tout into their sibling’s ear.
Instead, they are mollified with machinery before they have a chance to let out so much as a peep, a trance-like state of mesmerisation descends and leaves parents free to indulge their own love affair with technology.
Finally, Dr Jenny Radesky of Boston University has the courage to shout: “No more!”
Handing an iPad to a screaming child might stunt their emotional development, impede their progress in learning to talk and stop them acquiring “their own internal mechanisms of selfregulation”.
May I add, it will also stop them mastering one of life’s most important lessons – how to cope with boredom, which is an inevitable ingredient in even the most absorbing and sensational life.
For heaven’s sake stop it, mums, dads, grannies and grandpas.
You owe it to the next generation to allow them to be grumpy, uncooperative and distracting.
It’s the gift that keeps on giving.