Why you should not give young children iPads or similar electronic devices

One question I get asked the most often is “Should I give my young child my iPad or tablet?”  and my answer is a definite no!  While most children can break off association with screen time when they go off to nursery or school, the damage will already be done, and you will come to regret using your device as an ‘electronic baby sitter.’  As parents ourselves, we completely understand how hard the job is, and nobody expects you to be perfect. 

This article is not about making parents feel they are not doing their best, but an opportunity to make informed choices. 

We cannot expect parents to be with their children every waking hour. There are always important chores, such as cooking or laundry, and many parents have to juggle all this with work, too. Modern life is very demanding.  Though many have the convenience of working from home, longer hours are put in to keep on top of the workload.  

Teachers are seeing increasing numbers of children each year with weak handwriting skills

Part of my work is to train teachers in a movement-based therapy programme called Bal-A-Vis-X.  Most of my focus is on teachers who work in Early Foundation Years and Key Stage 1, and have had years of practice to become experts in their field.  80% of the time I go into a school for an initial consultation, I am told a great number of children are coming into school without the hand-grasping skills necessary to hold a pen or pencil with ease. 

Children are starting nursery without having developed the simple tripod grip they need for writing or drawing. They lack the necessary skills in using their hands and arms, and have insufficient hand-eye co-ordination. 

I believe that iPads and other such devices are largely responsible for this, and many other problems, too. Here’s why:  

1. iPads do not allow children to develop well-rounded language skills, as watching videos etc is entirely a passive activity. Instead of being encouraged to actively engage in a dialogue, they are being talked at, not talked with. This means they are only developing a very narrow range of the key language skills they need. 

2. The distance of the screen from the child is only arms length way, which forces the child to use close vision skills only. This is a problem for pre-school children in particular as it is especially important for them to develop their distance vision at this stage of development. They need to have this in place before they spend long periods of time on close vision tasks, and too much use of iPads is causing them to skip an essential developmental phase. 

3. Depending on the sound quality of the iPad, or the volume, the range of auditory sounds can’t provide the range of frequencies for good auditory processing and could lead to Auditory processing difficulties.  

4. Using or holding iPads does not provide any practice in the means to grip. Unlike holding a toy such as a ball or Lego bricks, they are not developing the same skills they need to learn handwriting. Their fingers need to wrap around objects, and they need to flex their hands in order to grab something. As an iPod is fixed, they never use the skills which are so important for hand/finger development.  

So, what can you do which is better than constant device use? Here are some great ideas to help your child develop: 

1. Nursery rhymes and action songs which are learnt and repeated over and over help children learn and understand. They often have phonemic manipulation and counting, not to mention pointing fingers at parts of the body, moving the body, and having actions for emotions.  By using actions, words and numbers to follow a rhythmic pattern, they are developing the skills to understand how syllables work when they later come to learn how to read. Nursery rhythms and encouraging conversation are a great way to nurture language skills.

2. Too much close work too early on in an infant’s life leads to the use of glasses, as the eyes stop being able to focus on distant objects  As Dr Carla Haniford writes in her book ‘Smart Moves’: “In Singapore, early reading has been pushed too far with disastrous repercussions.  Very young children are expected to do heavy reading and writing skills at the age of 3 or 4, straining their foveal focus before the muscles are ready. This has led to a population that has 85% of their 5-year-olds in glasses due to myopia and nearly 100% of them in glasses by age 10.”

   To help with this, help your child spend more time kicking a ball around, outdoors when possible, or even just around a room. This means their eyes will be focusing on an object that both moves away and gets closer. This is more much dynamic than sitting and staring at something which is a fixed distance and will also help their foot-eye co-ordination. Ideally, there should be a balance of activities that require hand-eye and/or foot-eye coordination, for example kicking and catching a ball. 

3. Nothing is better than one-to-one talking time with your child. The more you talk, the more they watch your mouth and are able to mimic the patterns.  Language comes from fine motor development and children need to be able to differentiate similar-sounding phonemes (the smallest units of sound). For example, ‘d’, ‘t’, and ‘p’ are all very similar consonant sounds. It takes a lot of listening to master the difference. Your child won’t be able to pick this up from the synthetic speakers on electronic devices. 

4. Children like to play. Play fuels the imagination and, self-initiated play is the best sort. A child can spend hours playing if the foundations are in place. Let’s face it, getting into character by dressing up as a superhero with a costume is so easy. This leads to character play where props are needed, large movements of jumping, pulling, pushing, throwing, catching, crawling, you name it! 

These are all skills which are needed much more than we often realise. You cannot strengthen the shoulder girdle watching an iPad, you need to be pulling open doors, turning skipping ropes and doing big movements. Fine motor coordination for handwriting is secondary to larger gross motor elements.  Children need to have many skills in place before handwriting can be successful.  This includes postural control when seated, hand-eye coordination, shoulder stability, and strong hand and wrist muscles.

Are all gadgets bad? 

I would say that television is the least problematic. Your child is seated 1.5 metres away, and the screen is large enough to encourage moving their eyes around different areas. Watching animated films such as Toy Story or Finding Nemo is very interesting for most children, and we certainly shouldn’t discourage the imagination involved. If they can watch an entire 1-hour+ film, that is a lot of concentration practice. There will be favourite songs, scary moments, heart-warming moments, and lots of other things to be absorbed into. It is not a fickle, shallow experience like iPad apps and games.

Yes, you can watch the same film on a small screen, but their eyes will be fixed in one position as no movement is required.  What you want is something that creates dialogue, not something that just occupies them short term.  This way they have thoroughly enjoyed themselves when you are busy and you can talk to them about their experience afterwards. However, I still recommend that screen time of any sort should be limited because it does not always stretch the imagination, build physical skills or allow them to build a sense of the world around them.  

So, I know it’s hard when you’re so busy, but get your child off the screens from time to time and get them moving! You won’t regret it. 

Dyslexia? Dyspraxia? ADHD? ASD? Speech & Language? Developmental Delay? Anxiety?

Is every school day a struggle? As a parent, you may feel exhausted and on this journey alone. Each year you see the gap getting wider. You need to do something - change the approach, help your child learn for themselves, find a way to turn this around before it is too late and they won’t listen - do this NOW. the first step is free.