The I-Phone is my new babysitter

There’s an ongoing battle at our house, actually it’s two battles (does that make it an ongoing war?). The point of contention of this war is the iphone, we have three, there’s four of us. Two of us are under three and have to share an iphone, though they really have no business messing with an iphone at all at their age. The iphone exerts some weird kind of magnetic pull on my children that I honestly don’t understand. It’s not like they need a phone, in fact, they’re both still iffy on what the phone is, and why we talk to it when it doesn’t answer back and why sometimes it talks like grandma. So what do they do with it? Well, of course, they imitate us, so they babble at the phone holding it to their ears, generally upside down, as they pace the living room. And then there’s you tube. They bring me the iphone, with the you tube app already open (they’re 1 and 3) and then want me to search for whatever they feel like watching at any given time, like “cars, mama” (3 year old) “vroom, vroom” (1 year old) or “tellytubbies, mama” (3 year old) “lalla, lalla” (1 year old), and so on and so forth. I pretty sure they’re going to learn to spell just so they can bypass me and just search for the stuff themselves.

Anyway, I try to limit their use of the iphone, for obvious reasons, but then when in the midst of a tantrum, or hissy fit, or whine-fest, I find myself surreptitiously reaching for it and waving it in front of them, much like a dealer waving crack in front of a junkie because nothing, nothing shuts them up faster. But unlike the dealer I later feel terrible, the guilt rises and engulfs me, I’m a terrible mother, I should distract them, entertain them, tell them captivating stories…. And then… I realize that as I’m sitting there, wrought with guilt… I’m also checking twitter or facebook or my blog stats… on my iphone. Hmmm. Methinks this is a clear case of teaching by example. I guess the iphone’s not so bad after all… it may even teach them to spell sooner.

p.s. I apologize for my overly enthusiastic use of the ellipsis in this post.