I have seen most of the kids even Just a year-old ones, playing with Electronic devices like mobile phones, tablets, laptops … may be during travel or at home. Nowadays we parent, when we need to do our work peacefully or spend our time happily, we just give any of our electronic gadgets to keep them happy (away from us).
Do we ever think is it good for them? Do they get everything that we enjoyed in our childhood? Are they in good health and really happy? These are questions that arise to me, today when we were discussing about a candy man, who use to come along the streets with candy by playing music, we as kids used to rush for candy once we hear the music. He would wrap the candy in the form of watch, bangle, bracelet or chain as we wish. When we were discussing about that my daughter has experienced this but my son never experienced and now the concept is almost gone ☹.
Not only with others, it also happened with me. Being a mother of two kids – daughter (10 yrs) and son (5 yrs). I would say that there are many fabulous and interesting things that my son missed than my daughter and my daughter missed than me 😊
Where does it all go –
A Beautiful sand castle, where we dig doors and hold the hands through it.
A wooden and mud kitchen set, where leaves and flowers as a dish.
A gang of kids playing games – hide and seek, hopscotch, snake and ladders (thayam), stick fighting (kambu suthuthal), pallankuzhi, kho-kho, Killi (similar to cricket 😝), Gusthi (similar to wrestling 😝).
Having Koottanchoru (everyone brings an ingredient that is possible by them, all cooks together with the assistance of the elder and eat for lunch sitting together)
A street (all the people of that street) assemble together in a central place of their street, have fun and later watch movie and have fun together during the late nights of the weekend.
And the list keeps going ……………………….
But today, there exists summer classes, kids stay inside the home watching cartoons or playing with their gadgets, which results in the lack of vitamin-D, due to the lack of sunlight. Completely engaged with electronic gadgets makes them more and more intelligent and talent, but not physically active.
Kids below 3 years, engaging themselves with gadgets and cartoons, takes time to speak but with early sight problems, poor conduct with sunlight, as they are happy in their world and we (parents) are busy in our world.
From my view, just like that I feel kids can engage with electronic gadgets but not the whole time. Enjoy the indoor games but not all time. Let them shout, run, dance, cycle but with care, as childhood is the most precious stage to make memories for the whole life 😊