新加坡

It felt like a momentous, desperate decision.迷你倉 My wife and I were finally going to let our two daughters suckle on the teat of an electronic touchscreen nanny that experts assure us were development-stunting, intellect-sapping and soul-draining computer devices. But we had decided too late to get a tablet; there were none left for rental on board the budget airline and we had more than four hours to keep two hyperactive kids occupied.At that moment, at the end of our exhausting week-long holiday to the Gold Coast in Queensland, Australia, I would have climbed over the bodies of well- meaning child experts to pay an exorbitant price to get my hands on the controversial baby seat with an attachment for an iPad.Touchscreen computer devices are the worst thing to happen to young children since child labour in coal mines, according to experts. They are also the best things a guilt-ridden parent who is at his wit's end can give to his fidgety preschooler.Both opinions are absolutely correct. My two daughters, six-year-old Faith and three- year-old Sarah, have almost no access to computers on any given day. They read, engage in role-playing with each other, play with their toys, argue with each other and watch a little TV.As much as they drive me up the wall when they are bored and demand to be entertained, I see much value in boredom for children. It is when they are forced to entertain themselves that Sarah and Faith come up with the most crazily fun games and drawings. But there's an excruciating window of about 30 to 90 minutes to endure before they extricate themselves from the clutches of deathly boredom.During those times, we whip out the electronic opiate that is our iPhones. Previously, we had tried to stick to "educational" apps, such as e-books. But a young child's psyche is incredibly sophisticated. It can detect the most infinitesimal amount of "value" in an app and reject it with the speed of an Angry Bird launching itself at some green pigs.Faith recently dis文件倉overed via a friend an app called Baby Birthday Planner. It is bright, cute, colourful and keeps her and her younger sister thoroughly absorbed for huge chunks of time. My wife and I were relieved to resort to that particular e-drug in the midst of a tumultuous sea of "How long more before we arrive?" whines on long road trips in Queensland. This, even as we worried how completely the app was able consume their attention.If the night flight to Gold Coast was nightmarish because of all that wriggling and kicking about of our two tired but unrested daughters, the day flight back to Singapore was a new level of torture.The two little ones had grabbed about nine hours of sleep before our early flight but my wife and I hadn't. We packed through the night and slept badly for fear of oversleeping and missing our flight.When we finally boarded the plane, we were strapped into a confined space with two restless kids who kept asking, "What else can we do?", "How long more do we have to go?", "Can I go to the toilet?" and thousands of other whines I tried to drown out in a sleep-deprived haze.And that was just the first hour. There were another six to go. Feeding them in-flight junk food, which they love and which we loath to give them, killed 15 minutes. Reading them books we had brought along earned us another 15 minutes' reprieve. Playing a simple board game with them was a waste of a lousy five minutes.Then my wife and I asked in vain to rent a tablet, wallowed in self-pity for about 10 minutes and somehow both of us managed to sleep for about an hour while Faith and Sarah entertained themselves and played with each other.Am I proud to have survived a seven- hour flight with two young children without any touchscreen nanny, while other kids were glued to their tablets? Yes. Would I do it again? No. There are always other times to feed their minds properly.andychen@sph.com.sgDo parents rely too much on electronic gadgets to "babysit" their children? E-mail suntimes@sph.com.sg存倉