I often hear proud parents tell me how their son/daughter is so naughty that not a single remote control in their house is in working order. Their cordless phones have been bashed up and are hanging on to dear life by the dint of scotch tape. They have regressed to using the early man mobile handsets which are cheap and hardy, have none of the fancy functions of the latest touch phones and are hence, less prone to quick disintegration.

Having been blessed with a daughter who is amenable to receiving and following instructions, the control freak in me has had a very easy time so far. Just by telling her that toys are for playing and other things are for uncle aunties to use, I have managed to save all our remote controls, cordless/corded phones, cell phones, sundry music players etc. from premature destruction. p1 has been a most easy child to bring up in that sense. However, little p2, by virtue of his gender or DNA or something has already shown a remarkable predilection for all things gadgety/”electronicy”/”wirey” etc. He examines dinky cars closely for several minutes at a time and gives them a couple of thumps to see what happens. Remotes, cordless handsets, mobile phones, our laptop, its external mouse – all are fair game to him. He loves to pull wires, press all the buttons on the phones, drop the remote from a height to see what happens. Not for a second can I watch television without fighting him off for the possession of the remote. Every phone call I make or take appears to be for him since he comes running (crawling really fast, I mean) each time the phone rings saying ka, ka, ka and wants to pull off the said object from my hand. All this is very wearying and also very worrying. I can manage to fight him off when he is just 9 months old. But what happens when he is a bit older and stronger or starts to do these things surreptitiously? I guess, I can only hope that better sense prevails by then and he leaves these things alone.

On the other hand, it is only now that p1 is nearly 4 years old that she is beginning to handle gadgets with ease as well as frequency. She still does not know much of remote controls – and requests us to switch on the TV for her. She can however, use the home theater – she can switch it on, take out a CD, put in a fresh CD and reverse the process when she’s done watching. Of course, her small hands cannot efficiently handle the CDs without damaging them sometimes. But she is quite at home with the phones. She can dial numbers when we say them aloud slowly. She can have a half way coherent conversation with her grand parents when they pick up the phone.  She runs to pick up the phone when it rings and annoyingly, doesn’t transmit the message to us sometimes – simply because she forgets. She can scroll using the mouse and routinely views old pictures on our laptop. She is just days away from learning to click and select items using the mouse. She expertly, unlocks our cell phones with a swipe of her tiny finger and goes to the required menu item by swiping again and again until she reaches the right page. She can choose the talking tom app or the talking babsy baby app and play all the moves. Sometimes, she goes into a tangent by opening a webpage but we quickly step in and stop the process. She knows how to come out the app by pressing the back key. Phew.

I have seen 6 – 8 year olds use iPods, iPads, PSPs with great alacrity. Their parents, like a lot of others,  believe that exposure to technology is good for kids. We should progress with the times. Now it is no longer admirable to hear that one’s child does not identify television characters or cannot use the computer or any video games.

Even though I am no technophobe, somehow I find it hard to agree with them. Even my p1′s 4 years is much too early for the kind of corruption that can result from gadgets. I can’t help feeling that this is a tender age indeed for this loss of innocence. I really wish she’d play with balls and dolls and balloons and puzzles and toys and skipping ropes and read and colour books, draw, or write. She does all this, no doubt. But technology is also a big part of what she wants to do. Needless to add, she takes a cue from us. A large part of our lives are devoted to technology. Thankfully we still read. Real books. She just emulates us as much as she can.

Sad but true. Technology is here to take over our lives. And it is drawing us in earlier and earlier.