Is high technology too high tech for toddlers?

Brenda Mata at mlive.com wrote an article that got me asking the same question –

“How much time is too much gaming?”

These days, technology toys are all the rage for babies and toddlers, in our quest to make our children more intelligent, or at the least, give them a headway for college.

DVDs like those from Baby Einstein directly teach them concepts just by watching TV. Interactive toys like laptops and games popularized by VTech and LeapFrog have our children learning how to play educational video games at an earlier age even as they are introduced to the ABCs. There are even toy keyboards, complete with a mouse, that attach to your computer screen and let a child play puzzles and all sorts of games that traditionally have been done on paper. Even sports has been mimicked onscreen through Wii. Educational is the keyword, all perhaps in the hopes of children gaining a few more intelligent brain cells and give them an early boost for higher education.

• Have you tried to do to limit your small child’s exposure to computer or console gaming?
• Are you worried about the influence that technology has?
• Do you use games or “educational” videos/DVDs as a babysitter?
• Are your kids or grandchildren spending too much time in front of the TV or computer screen?
• Do you limit the time on weeknights or weekends or do you believe that limits are unnecessary.
• How do you enforce rules about time limits?

Mata asks the same questions I’ve been struggling with. My preschooler isn’t allowed to play on our laptops, which my husband and I use for our work. She has the DVDs and a LeapFrog talking book but she hasn’t taken to them yet. She is not allowed to watch TV for hours, precisely because she gets hooked to it, but the DVDs that she does get to watch – the Dora’s, Baby Einsteins, Barneys – all seemed to have helped her develop intellectually.

She is enthralled by the Gameboy and PSPs that her older friends play and innocently asks us to buy her a one. She doesn’t know how to play them, but she likes what she sees. I have no doubt she will quickly learn.

I try to hold off on introducing her to the high tech world because I figure she will catch up on this quickly enough in school. But how much would it matter if she’s behind a few years? She has books, puzzles and a lot more toys that her hands can play with, but these get boring. Besides, I have to be hands-on if I’m teaching her ABCs out of a book. The DVD is so much easier! For a working mom like me, that is tempting enough to give me some space to do other chores at home.

What about YOU? How do you deal with our children’s exposure to the high tech world?