Remote Control

Submitted by Jennifer

It always amazes me at how technologically savvy the younger sect can be. I guess it is because they are growing up with all this technology and they don't know any different. While I learned about the Internet in third year university struggling to wade my way through Unix HTML programming while having no real comprehension of just what exactly it was I was trying to accomplish, KD has always had the world at her fingertips, just the click of a button away.

Now this is not to say that KD has had free reign by any stretch of the imagination. Her computer experience has been limited entirely to the occasional games that Clayton outlined in his last post and a couple of hours of Dora's Crystal Kingdom on the Mac. Still, from the first time she picked up the iPad, she had no problem figuring out exactly how it worked.

The same holds true for the remote control for the television. I am not a believer in letting babies play with the remote control. I simply think that children need to learn from a very young age that some things are just off limits. KD was taught not to touch and it is only just recently that I have shown her how to change the channel on the T.V.

Now the process of teaching a toddler not to touch the remote is a grueling and arduous proposition. It involves taking it away, every five or so seconds, for about a year before any headway is made. Little Z is just starting to get the message and he now very considerately brings the remote to me each time he finds it within his reach.

KD, on the other hand, was much more slick. One time when she was not quite a year old, I was folding laundry in the living room while she was playing happily on the floor. I went off to her bedroom to put away the laundry, and was not out of the room for more than thirty seconds when I heard the very distinctive sound of the MGM theme song coming from the living room.

"What the...?!?".

I made it back to living room just in time to see the opening credits of "American Gangster" playing across the television screen. It would seem that KD had not only tracked down the remote in my absence, but she had managed to order a very inappropriate pay-per-view movie in that time!

Then we added "west side" to her baby sign flash cards...

Needless to say, we did not watch the movie...

Jen