Thoughts?
Loose Women star Carol McGiffin recently ended up causing a debate among parents – and her co-stars – for suggesting that giving kids tablets is essentially the same as ‘giving them a dummy’.
In other words – just to make them stay quiet.
The TV presenter spoke out against letting children watch films or play games on tablets during long car journeys, insisting that if parents allow this, children are missing out on so much.
As co-host Ruth Langsford asked ‘Are you an iPad parent?’, Carol said that nowadays, kids had to be ‘distracted and busy all the time’, and in her opinion, they were missing out on the nature around them and conversations and car games with the family.
She argued that giving a child a tablet on a car journey or plane trip was nothing but the parents trying to ‘keep them quiet.’
Co-presenter Katie Piper confessed she was an iPad parent who allows her children to use tablets while travelling in a car or on a plane.
‘For your benefit or theirs?’
The issue came up after Katie said she’d had questions from followers asking her how she does it all and said it was important to be transparent.
‘I think it’s important to be transparent. I don’t think you can have and do it all.
‘We let our kids have a tablet.’
Langsford then asked: ‘Is that for your benefit or theirs?’, with her co-hostadmitting that it was ‘mutually beneficial’.
In response to the discussion, Carol said:
“This whole thing that kids have to be distracted and busy all the time and they can’t be bored on a car journey for a few hours and look at nature, look at the trees and try and play I Spy…”
However, fellow presenter Kelle Bryan admitted she encouraged her children to look outside and to play ‘I spy’, for a ‘portion of the journey’.
“We do that, we look at the cows, we look at the trees and they enjoy that and then I say “now read a story on this,” or whatever on a device and then they watch a movie and then that journey is over. I’ve enjoyed it, they’ve enjoyed it.”
In response to Katie’s suggestion that tablets were just the equivalent of a ‘portable telly’, Carol then responded:
“Portable telly? I’m sorry it’s a pacifier, it’s like a dummy. Give the kid a dummy in the back, keep them quiet.”
She added:
“Mostly parents give their kids things like that to distract them because they’re too busy on their phones to entertain their own kids.”
Whose side are you on, parents? iPad or no iPad in the car?
