Re: A good balance?
 

At the moment my boy (3.5) gets to spend 20 mins a day on cbeebies....

When he's older he'll have his own computer in his room.

He spends a lot of time doing physical/outdoor stuff too.

Re: A good balance?
 

I think that's the problem nowadays, kids are so protected they don't know the freedom of going out and being out all day and making their own entertainment. My parents never worried about where I was and what I was doing and I certainly never had to ask them "what can I do today". I had a bike, loads of friends and never spent any money in having a great day. Debs off to think back to a carefree, internet-free childhood :erm:

Re: A good balance?
 

Mrs T and I are almost paranoidally careful of introducing Americanisms to our wee man. I'd cringe if I heard him say 'tomayto' or 'brought to you by the letter zee!'. :D That'd put me off the Seasme Street site, although I admit I've not seen it myself.

Thankfully most electronic spelling toys these days seem to have the 'z' re-recorded for British use. However, we were in Toys'r'us looking for birthday presents at the weekend and came across some talking Bob the Builder stuff ... great, we thought, until we pressed the buttons and found the characters were talking with American accents!! :Yikes: Presumably the voices are re-dubbed for broadcast in the US, which is fair enough (Clifford the Big Red Dog is re-dubbed for the UK), but trying to sell the Yankee voices back here is just arrogant corporate laziness.

Re: A good balance?
 

I think the computer has done much more harm than good to me. I have lost all my social skills and I now get crippling social anxiety when I'm talking in a large group of my peers. I also get recurring depression.

I spend most of my day on a computer, have done since I was 11. My mum and dad always told me to get out but I didn't understand why. Now I do.

I think that the age period between 11 and 18 is about learning to interact with your peers so that you grow into an adult sucessfully. I think that the computer has definately done more harm than good. It is an addiction and even though nowadays I limit myself to 2 hours per day, it has done some permanent damage with my social skills, or at least, it will take many years to develop them again.

Re: A good balance?
 

But thats the thing nowadays..parents are, if you dont mind me saying so, more responsible in the way they let their kids do things...

Re: A good balance?
 

That's my concern. :clap:

Re: A good balance?
 

I still have fun with my friends, and I understand that all my time shouldnt be spent on the computer, if anything, I enjoy talking to my mates, etc. more than the computer, its just I find the computer more interesting than going to town with my mates..

Re: A good balance?
 

If that made sense o_O

Re: A good balance?
 

I did exactly the same stuff as Debs - I was lucky I supose, we loved in a nce area, with no apparent dangers to childrens safety when we were out playing (dens, bmxs, dog walking, football on the plains, et etc).

It's nothing to do with how responsible my or Densys' parents were...

PC as an academic education tool is fabulous - so much info at your fingertips - but what about the social skills, ie tam playing, consideration for others, appreciation of other people and their actions etc etc?

Re: A good balance?
 

My kids rarely spend more than a 30 minutes a day on their pc, often much less.

In daylight hours they want to be out playing with their friends, not stuck inside on a pc ( even when it's raining :rolleyes: ). We usually have trouble getting them in, not getting them out. :D

Re: A good balance?
 

Brave of you to say so, and I think your parents are right. MSN gives you an unnatural level of control over your social interaction with other people. In the real world - which you have to face sooner or later, and frankly the sooner the better - you can't talk TXT, you can't paste smileys onto the end of your sentences, you can't control who is in your conversation and when, and you can't conduct half a dozen separate but parallel chats and have two or three web browsers open, while listening to a CD, all the while giving each person you're talking to the illusion that they have your full attention. Verbal conversation skills require face-to-face interaction.

Re: A good balance?
 

In todays environment I couldn't see myself to allowing my 12 year old (let alone the 9 year old) daughter wander the streets looking for their friends (who could live up to 3 miles away). :shocked: What can I do ?? :erm:

Re: A good balance?
 

Yeah, I'm fine with my friends because most of them have spent time on the computer like me, and my school friends are the ones I talk to online.

Nonetheless, they have limited themselves on the computer a lot more and have had a life on the side. I was never interested in sport or whatever, only technical stuff. I think the trouble was that I based the life around my computer instead of basing the computer around my life. I think it is possible to achieve a healthy balance because computers do have advantages to offer, but it can easily go wrong. If I ever have children it will be no more than half an hour per day that they are allowed to spend online.

Re: A good balance?
 

Well, you could take comfort in the fact that 'today's environment' is largely a figment of tabloid hysteria. There were 68 successful abductions of children by strangers in 2002-2003 (Source (PDF)). That's 68 too many, but a very small number of children overall. About 5,000 children under 16 are killed or injured in road accidents every year. (source).

Re: A good balance?
 

Exactly !!!
And I think we need to get out there and learn these skills for interaction and be able to speak face to face with people. Think about it when you end up getting a job...half of life revolves round communicating with other people.
With MSN, its too easy to use words and sentences that we wouldnt dare use in real life situations and it is basically just not the real you as you are hiding behind a PC. Meeting up with friends and seeing a smile on their face and laughing together is much more fun than spending an evening typing "LOL" on the PC.
OK, MSN is good for keeping in contact with penpals and I use it to organise meet ups with friends so we know what we are doing the following day, but theres just something about internet conversations that make them hard to interpret sometimes. On occasions people will write things that you may think mean more than something else, or they dont realise what impact a certain phrase that can be quickly typed can have at that second it appears.