Texting for tots

I saw a 4-year-old taking pictures with a bulky, multi-colored Fisher Price digital camera the other day.

When I was that age, I was playing with the Fisher Price Chunky Little People Farm, and that was exciting for its time because the barn door made a “moo” sound when opened and the set included a miniature tractor and a tiny bag of feed.

So I went online to figure out if I had really seen what I thought I did. I had.

The Fisher Price Web site describes their Kid-Tough Digital Camera as being simple enough for kids “3 years and up.”

A customer review on Amazon.com described it as being “a hard-to-use, inferior product that your kids will love.” Another customer claimed “the pictures are so bad that it might as well be a block of wood painted to look like a camera.”

I browsed Amazon.com for quite a while in a state of shock and awe. Amazon has a “Digital Camera for Kids Community,” which is a forum where clueless parents post questions and advice under headings such as “Which ... camera to buy for daughter’s 4th birthday” and “HELP!! What’s a good digital camera for a 6 yr. old?”

I only recently began to accept the reality of 14-year-olds having their own cell phones, so this really had me scratching my head. What other bizarre toddler trends had my college-town bubble been protecting me from noticing?

I had to find out. So I held my breath, closed my eyes and daringly typed “BlackBerry for kids” into my Google search. I got 14,200,000 results.

Apparently, a British company called LeapFrog is about to launch the “Text & Learn,” a BlackBerry-style gadget aimed at toddlers.

I know what you’re thinking: If we are going to encourage young children to start imitating their parents’ habits, shouldn’t we at least start them off with addictions that are less destructive and time-consuming? Like gambling? Or drinking?

From what I understand, the Text & Learn is like the Speak & Spell on shrooms. It has a large LCD screen, a full keyboard and a built-in calendar to better help 2-year-olds keep track of their time commitments.

It also has a pretend “Web browser” mode so that children can pretend to surf the Internet while they communicate via “text message” with an imaginary, asexual friend named Scout. I personally think this last feature is incredibly beneficial. With children hitting puberty at such a young age these days, they need all of the texting practice they can get early on so they will know how to send and respond to midnight booty calls in just a few short years.

When my children turn 3 someday, I hope to buy them a Fisher Price time travel machine with a built-in MP3 Player and Blue-ray Disk.

With any luck, I will have them T9ing before they even know their
colors.