Monday, September 17, 2018

Screen time: not a total brain drain


Max likes to watch a whole lot of fire truck videos on YouTube. He's fond of ones taken in New York City and Orlando, where he plans to move. I have never fully decided whether this habit is good, bad or neutral. I mean, any screen times takes you away from doing activities that don't involve sitting on a couch, so there's that. But fire truck videos seem more innocuous than dippy tween sitcoms or video games. Turns out they have a bit of educational value.

Max has a Weekend Report due every Monday at school, with fill-in-the blanks for what he ate, went to see, watched and listened to. (He uses the SnapType Pro app on his iPad). It was a given what "watched" would be for last Friday: My boy went to see an early evening showing of Incredibles 2 all by himself. Yep. It was the sixth time he was seeing the movie, and he asked to go alone. (Not that any of us were dying to see it again.) He was pretty proud of that.

I was especially gleeful to see what he typed about where he went on Saturday ("I went to New York City I saw 3 fire trucks responding") and what he watched ("FDNY fire truck responding on YouTube). I had no idea he knew that word. Then I realized it was straight off the YouTube fire truck videos, some of which have "fire trucks responding" in their titles. Max had picked up the word from there, and was using it appropriately.

Max's vocabulary is coming along, slowly but surely. Every single new word is exciting. So I felt a smidge better about his obsession with fire truck videos. And yes, we've tried to get him to watch other stuff. For now, it's fire trucks. Responding!

2 comments:

  1. Ellen....
    We have a cute little playground just down the street from our home that is located on a fire station!! {Do you have any idea how convenient it is to have a fire department within walking distance from our house?! This came in handy one time last year…. Man, they arrive fast!!} We have driven my nieces, ‘Amethyst’ and ‘Opal’ and my nephew, ‘Capricorn’ there several times this Summer!! More often than not, we get to see a fire truck either pull in or drive away while we are running around on its playground!! And they always, always, always wave at us!! Fireman Max would totally love that little playground!! ;)
    Peace out, Mary Lou

    ReplyDelete
  2. Hello ellen...i m a mother of a 10 months old girl..named sarah..recently she diagnosed with neonatal stroke..she was not using her left hand.. then we came to know the she had a stroke in her infancy..that was so hard moment for me..i can't imagine my little girl to live her whole life like this..ur post on parents.com was so inspiring..i want to ask u will u help me out in this difficult time..i lived in a rural area of Pakistan..i dont have any therapists..will u guide me..how can i help sarah..how can i give her therapy by my self.. so she can also live her life like max..l

    ReplyDelete

Thanks for sharing!



Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...