Comments on: Baby BlackBerry: Evil or the Evilest Baby Product?

By: leeleea

leeleea — Sun, 01 Mar 2009 06:29:36 +0000

At Christmas my fifteen month old got a the Baby Leaps system. It’s seriously like a little Playstation for baby. I am so completely uncomfortable with it, I think I’m going to sell it on Ebay. We also got TWO of those ridiculous Ride & Spin Ponies. They’re going on Ebay also. I don’t think she needs video games so soon. She’ll play with her books all day long.

By: Lori

Lori — Sun, 22 Feb 2009 05:14:53 +0000

I’m so with Gregory on this post. My family had a Commodore 64, I played the original NES as a child and I surf the ‘Net as much as the next person. Yet you most often find me curled up with a book. If you’re allowing your kid to sit for hours on an electronic device, it’s not the device’s fault, it’s the parent’s.

As a cautionary note for e-access when the kidlets get older, I taught English in a low-income district. The kids with little computer access had a MUCH more difficult time dealing with new programs like Word and PowerPoint. Then there were kids who were teaching me shortcuts on the programs, they’re so familiar with computers. Even if they had never used the program, they could navigate the menus because they had familiarity with them.

My two cents! :)

By: Jen

Jen — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 03:53:33 +0000

I’m not quite sure what to think of this… I’m not a fan of handheld games… especially when a kid is constantly “plugged in”, as Dr Phil would say.

But, we do own toy laptops… i got them right before my older daughter turned 3 and was getting interested in using the computer, and I didn’t want her to play on the real one.

Would I buy this for my kids? Definitely not!

By: Christy

Christy — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 23:48:52 +0000

Wow. I really had no idea that this type of toy was out, though I shouldn’t be surprised.

I have a 1st Gen iPhone (hubs has a 3G) and we let our 3 y/o daughter “play” with them. She knows how to use the iPod, turn on her games, and even check the temperature outside. We are teaching her to handle it carefully, but we are also not giving her free reign of it. She does use other flat-surface objects to imitate the iPhone. She can “swipe” with the best of ‘em!

That being said, there is no way that I would get her a “toy” like this. If she is going to play with an item, why not make it the real thing in this case?

By: Pippin

Pippin — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 15:45:42 +0000

Bleh. I have to remind and remind and remind my family NOT to get my 20 month old toys like this. I don’t understand why a child needs a “crackberry” toy.

Just last week, I gathered up the battery-operated, blinking, loud toys and took them to my mother’s house. Mom wanted some “toys to stay at Gammie’s house”.

Well, Mom, remember all those loud toys I begged you not to buy? They’re at your house now.

I sympathize with a previous poster who said she went to Target to buy a toy and left in disgust. My child has lots of books.

(The noisy books went to Grandma’s house too).

By: Jeff

Jeff — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 12:59:06 +0000

Not sure I would need this one, my nearly 5-yr old already has a iPhone, bluetooth headset and a 17″ Macbook Pro. Ha!

Seriously though, this is nuts but not something that surprises me in the least.

I’m going to NYC Toy Fair in 10 days and I’m sure I’ll see a lot more of this type of thing ready to be pushed on us and our kids.

By: MoJo

MoJo — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 19:36:01 +0000

As a blackberry toting parent, I do understand and agree that some activities are not meant to be emulated. Including a pretend blackberry. My husband and I both use them. They allow us to be disconnected from the computer, while not ignoring responsibilities we have to work. Our kids know they are ‘work phones’ and not to be played with. Only in a few instances (long plane ride and 1 year old who refuses to be buckled in a car seat) where we hand them our evil devices for a moment of peace. So I rate this device a 5. Only because long before this toy blackberry, I have seen pretend MP3 players, pretend keys that have the electronic lock/unlock device and so on. I wouldn’t buy them, but toy marketers definitely know that there is a market for emulating the things that parents use often.

By: Katie

Katie — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 19:30:24 +0000

I agree with Jeanne. It’s bad, but only about an 8 or 9. I personally would never buy it for the same reason I would never by any toy that takes batteries. However, it seems like the kind of toy that my parents might get for our daughter and if they did I wouldn’t take it away or hide it, just leave it in the toy box with all the other electronic toys for her to play with at will. No matter what toys we get for her she is more interested in random stuff she finds about the house anyway.

By: KGS

KGS — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 18:08:30 +0000

I don’t think this is all that terrible, just a potential waste of money (and probably noisy). I imagine kids will mostly end up having pretend conversations on it just like any other (simpler, cheaper) toy phone, or possibly pretend to look up a map or something, both of which seem fine to me. I suspect kids won’t use the “educational” part much, simply because endlessly hearing about letters and numbers from some machine is really boring. Parents and teachers can make letters interesting, machines generally can’t; to me that makes them pointless, but not evil.

That said, I will admit my daughter learned the alphabet song partially from a Leapfrog brand singing frog toy. We only sang the song together about 20 times every single day during the course of that particular obsession of hers, and “froggie” was perfectly willing to sing it on demand at least 60 times MORE per day, which she seemed to really really want for a week or two. Am I sorry I didn’t sing that song personally all 80 times each day? Nope.

By: Gregory

Gregory — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 17:47:48 +0000

I personally don’t understand the backlash against electronic toys. There are good toys and not so good toys, even in the unplugged world. Just because a toy is electronic, it gets a bad mark… I don’t understand that.

Also, I don’t understand why an electronic toy is automatically marked a “no parent interaction” toy… any toy could be that way. Why is it better to leave a child alone playing with blocks versus a parent interacting with a child while playing with an electronic toy?

To me, it really comes down to what you expose your child to, and how much time you interact with them. If a parent uses devices like a Blackberry all the time, how can the child not notice. Why judge a parent based on the product? How do you know the parent isn’t using the product in interactive play, like any other unplugged toy?

Anyways, I’m ranting. AJ, the reason I read your blog all the time is because you do honestly share your opinions. I just don’t always agree. :)