Parents spelling the names of their devices so kids don't understand and ask for them. I can totally relate as hearing "iPhone" used to trigger in my 3-year old son the urge to use it right away. He didn't play any games, as I have none, the only purpose was to take pictures.
He takes after his dad who loves photography and improvised a small studio in the basement. This must be the reason I had no objection for my son's using my phone. I must say I found it quite cute and watched him proudly handling the smartphone. But this was until he became obsessed with it and kept asking for it every single moment of the day when he wasn't involved in other activities. So, I switched gears and adopted a NO attitude but the little sneak would find a moment when I wasn't paying attention and take it away from my desk. I decided to hide the phone in the mudroom but this made me feel out of control of my own belongings. It wasn't what I was aiming for. That's the point when we reached a compromise: my son could use the iPhone for 10 minutes everyday. Guess what? It worked. He even learned how to set up the ranger timer, put the phone back at the end of the 10 minutes and wait until the next day to ask for it again.
In the meantime my old camera was collecting dust thrown in a corner of the house. I hadn't used it in a very long time and didn't plan on doing it again. My hubby and I decided to wait until Christmas to give it to Victor. It gave us time to work on building up his desire for his own camera. This year he was old enough to understand what's Santa all about and that you can write to him and ask for specific things. Santa has the power of making wishes come true, if the kids are nice, of course! I can't really say Victor's been 100% nice throughout the year but he did get his own camera.
It was the smallest gift under the Christmas tree and Victor was certain it was for his little brother. He was so thrilled to discover the camera that he didn't care about the rest of the gifts. All he wanted to do was take pictures of the others unwrapping their presents.
6 days later his favorite activity is still taking photos and filming us saying "Hi" to him. I know he spends too much time with his camera but hopefully he'll get it out of his system by the end of the winter vacation when we get back to limiting his time.
An old thing can become a great new present for a young kid as long as it's something he takes interest in.
The photos that accompany this post have been taken by my son. I must explain this last one as you may have a hard time identifying what it is : an Asian pear wrapper :)
Stef
Labels: Gifts For Kids
