It shouldn’t come as a shock that my kids are pretty geeky. They grew up loving Star Wars. We started them off with the original trilogy only, and then The Phantom Menace after they found the DVD and thought Darth Maul looked “awesome.” And while they love slapstick, they are not Jar Jar fans.
While they’ve only seen bits of episodes, they recognized the TARDIS sticker on my car as being from Doctor Who- and recognize the Tenth Doctor, even though they’ve mostly seen Eleven.
(The only problem we’ve run into is that any space movie seems to be identified as part of the Star Wars universe. But we’re working on that)
I tried to keep them away from the internet when they were younger (I just didn’t want them to be as addicted to computers as I am), but the two of them are both adept at navigating YouTube, surfing through bookmarked videos that we deemed safe. If they have a question and I’m not sure of the answer, the Oldest Kidlet will say, “Can you look it up on the internet?” Seriously. And they’re better at using my Nook than TheBoy is (though in his defense, he hasn’t given it much of a shot). So good, they’ve been teaching members of the family.
Yesterday, the Oldest Kidlet was using an art program on the Nook and came over to me. “Mom, I want to send you an email with my picture, but it won’t let me.”
I looked, and since I hadn’t set up my email in my Nook yet, there was nothing to connect with. Instead I showed him how to use DropBox to send me the picture. That’s right, my son now knows about DropBox and finds it amazing. “So it saves it somewhere like the internet and if we have this program, then any of the computers and Nooks with it can get my picture?”
There you have it. Seven years old and he gets the concept of storing things in the cloud.
(He does have an email address. Both boys do. As soon as I knew their names, I got Gmail addresses for them with their full names, and after the Little Kidlet was born I set up Twitter handles for the both of them.)
So yes, my boys are geeklings. Pretty soon I’ll be introducing video games to them (if you can think of any really good DS or 3DS titles, I’d appreciate it) and helping them email family members. How on earth is time moving this quickly?
Wish their “uncle” Jerad was still around to help promote their geekliness. He would have gotten a big kick out of this!
He would have loved it all. And probably have been giving me a hard time about wanting to wait for OK to play video games.
I really do think he would have loved the personalities that are emerging.
We inundated our kids with Star Wars early on. Funny what they remember!
Now choosing how much internet and technology to allow them to use is a constant challenge.
It’s something that I struggle with. Already we set limits for YouTube time, even though that’s monitored and have to set limits for using the Nook. Limits, limits, limits. Ah well. Better to set limits so they don’t turn into vegetables like me 😉