My godson, Shane, is pretty good at technology — especially for a 2 year-old.
He’s very good, for example, at picking up my sister’s phone, finding my picture, and tapping it to call me. A typical call goes like this:
Me: Hello?
Shane: giggling
Me: Shane? Is that you?
Shane: Blah blah squeal BLAH!
Me: That’s really interesting. Well, let me tell you about my day…
Shane: maniacal laughter hangs up
On longer calls, he’ll babble on and on about stuff, and then my sister will pick up the phone to tell me how he’s been walking around the house and the yard, pointing at things and telling me about them. I guess he is really into this tree in their backyard, and he talks to me about it all the time. (If I’m being honest, from my end of the line he’s about as excited about the tree as he is about their cat, or his toy cars, or this Batman mask he likes to wear.)
So he’s recently learned how to use Skype to talk to me, and this weekend, he introduced me to a new game that he likes to play. I don’t think he named it, but I call it “Run Around The House With Uncle Wil On Mom’s iPad, Put Him On The Floor In The Hallway, Then Run Away Laughing.”
Witness:
It’s a pretty fun game for him, and I’m not sure what the rules are, but I think he’s winning.
Also? It’s a little bit of a mindfuck that he’s growing up in a world where being able to see me on a thing he holds in his hands while we talk to each other is so normal and pedestrian, he can literally put it/me on the ground and RUN AWAY from it.
Some of my favourite moments include when I open Facetime to a huge giggling face of one of my nephews on their mum’s iPad. I LOVE this living in the future malarkey.
And they can’t imagine that we had stationary phones or lack of video.
Just as long as he doesn’t call 911. Two of my four kids managed that at one point or another. The operators are not amused when they call back and find it was a kid playing with the phone, let me tell you. š
My goddaughter does the same to me. Her mom tells me that she just wants me in the room while she plays. She’s learned to prop me up so I can see her blur past the tablet.
That is hilarious Wil. š Thanks for posting!
You look like a tiny Shia LaBeouf
He’s expecting you to chase him.
Looking up from the floor like that has a definite Portal feel to it.
Oh that’s so true! now add another portal on the ceiling to accelerate š (how is the spelling again? sorry it’s 3:21 a.m. in france, i should sleep ;))
haha that’s so cute! thank you so much for sharing š
As a Gramma, I’ve played this game quite a bit with the grands up north. The 4 year old picked up her dad’s phone habit and paces, until I’m slightly motion sick… Almost 2 does the giggle and hang up. You’ve only got about 3 years more of this before he learns phone/video call etiquette.
Have fun.
Kids start everything earlier today! I think it’s cute that he singles out your photo.
ROTFLMBO!!! ARGH I’m gasping for air that’s So funny. Thanks for the giggle Will:).
Too adorable! My nephew is 4 and snuck his dad’s phone the other day. He called my husband, his mom at work during an important meeting, and unfortunately…911. Yeahhhhh, busted.
First real vacation in life, went to Hawaii with a notebook computer. Skyped my daughter and her son – he watched for a while not understanding what was going on (about 18 months old) when suddenly, he held his hands up in the universal ‘pick me up’ mode. “Pick me up Granddad!” Suddenly I’m glad to live in the future.
Used skype and Google voice when I was deployed to talk to my wife and kids. Probably pissed my roommate off a bit with the calling at 2 in the morning but seeing their faces was more important.
Technology has changed my son’s relationship with my in-law’s. Now he can call them on the I-thingy and recently, my FIL (who is a techy sort of guy..worked for IBM for many years in fact) taught him how to create a Google Hangout so they could talk to each other on my son’s Android tablet we bought him for Christmas. We even found an app for the IPad he has at school that allows him to scan in the printed material his teacher gives him (like a textbook page for example) and allows him to type in the correct answers, turn the work into a PDF document which he can then email to his teacher.
Ain’t technology wonderful? š #StarTrekMadeItPossible
My brother plays Skype peek-a-boo with both of my kids (son’s 3 years, daughter’s 8 months). I love that we can talk to Uncle Stu and see his face regularly, even though he lives in another province. It means his niece probably won’t make strange with him the next time she sees him in person.
Actually, it can be really funny when they see them in person. My kids were used to seeing their grandparents on Skype. When they were able to come and visit my children were all completely flummoxed that this was a real person. With a couple of them for a few minutes they would look back and forth between the computer and my in-laws as if to ask ‘how did you climb out of the box’? š
Does it get any better than this? You’ve got a heck of a nephew there! Keep enjoying him.
That’s adorable. I think Zoey’s gonna be like that. They are 15 months now, and every morning I carry them downstairs and set them down and they run full speed to go check out the area and see if anything is new. It should be set to that benny hill music. Zoey always makes a mad dash for the living room and the first thing she grabs is the remote control for the TV and she grins like the happiest baby in the world.
I keep my phone in my pocket and she is never ending her quest to wrench it out of my pocket. Always pulling at my jeans, pulling at my shirt to GET. THE. PHONE. OUT. and push the home button and squeal and giggle like a fool.
LOL! You look rather… bemused in your little corner of the screen. As a Grandfather of nine children, most of which are toddlers, I can assure you that you are losing The Game. Of course you are not allowed to know the rules and if you should figure them out, they will immediately change anyway. Enjoy!
Your nephew sounds like my 2 year old. š My son has started calling and Skyping people. In one of his recent calls to his uncle he decided to show him his little trampoline. I think my brother got motion sick from the bouncing. š Thank you for sharing and I hope your sister enjoys watching her little man enjoy the “future” as much as I do.
Mindblowing, for sure. My seven-year-old daughter is so used to video calls that on audio-only calls she’ll still hold items up toward the computer or phone and say “Look at this!” When informed that Grandma can’t see her right now, she pouts.
My daughter, who is now very adept at working technology has been working the iPad since she was about a year old, largely from watching her older brother who was only 2 1/2 when she was 1 and very adept at working the iPad too.
By the time these kids are 15 they will be to us what we were to our parents which is cool and scary since when I was 15 I was writing computer games. I’ve no idea what they’ll be doing when they are 15 but I hope I don’t feel too old to partake.
I think kids have always been drawn to phones, even before smartphones or cells. The idea that, when you press some buttons and hold it to your ear, someone will talk to you, must seem like magic to a two-year-old. And just try prising the phone out of the hand of a child once he’s ‘in conversation’.
And it’s not just phones.
My brother’s eldest boy learned to load and play a DVD by the age of three, all from observation. The steps included polishing the shiny side on his shirt before putting the disk in the tray (because that’s what Daddy does)…
Because kids are sharp – they watch everything, and take it all in. I recall there was a joke going around about 20-odd years ago that if you wanted to program your VCR (remember those?), forget the manual, just find a five-year-old and give them the remote.
Kids are more naturally in tune with their surroundings and technology because they just take it for granted. I imagine it was always the way, we just never noticed it about ourselves.
But I’m sure our parents could tell us a few amusing stories.
Now where’s the manual for that VCR?
This new age, they are born with them in their hands. In our day u know lol nothing like this. But i bet this is such fun for u both .. Have a great week Sir š
The real mindfuck will be eight or nine years from now when he finds this blog posting…
You are supposed to chase after him.
It must be so cool to be a kid and be able to carry an adult around to where you want him!
Due to an injury on my part, my wife has had to work nights over the last several years and my now 8 year old daughter has practically grown up seeing her mother on on the computer at bed time or bus time. It is amazing the things we couldn’t have even dreamed of when we were kids that our kids have never lived without.
My 4-year-old son thinks every call is a video call. Sometimes when he’s at my mom’s house, he calls to say he wants to show me something he drew. That’s great, but they used her flip phone to call.
I recently allowed my daughter to put snapchat on her tablet. Now I get 12 adorable snaps a day about the dog, school, and ” when you coming home from work?” . Its awesome.
This is the best photo of the best game!
We play hide and seek with my littler nephews via Skype when they call. We also play “tickle me” (my sister supplies the tickling hand). They live in Florida, we live in Canada. We think it’s awesome that we can do this – we’d never see them except for on holidays if the technology didn’t exist.
Do you remember when all that long ago, you could only pretend to talk to someone on a handheld screen when you were pretending to fly a spaceship? Pretty amazing stuff.
My almost 7-year-old son does that to his Nana. It drives me nuts, but she doesn’t mind too much. Pretty awesome considering we live halfway across the country from each other. Skype is much less expensive than plane tickets.
cool!
That’s great. Note, though, that HIS godson will be able to tap a pin on his lapel and say, “Godson to Shane, come in Shane,” at which point, Shane will appear on the screen nearest to him.
Or at least that’s what I saw on this TV show I was watching the other day… š
Wil that is so funny. My great grandkids do the same thing to me. They hug the phone and kiss it when they have to go. They are always holding out the phone to show me things, but unlike you I have no cell phone with a screen so without their parents narrating the story I would be totally lost. I even have a great that makes me robots out of logos so I can play robots with him on the phone, and God help me for the first time in my life I play Barbies also on the phone. However silly I felt in the beginning it is great to be so loved.
My 3.5 year old picked up my phone while I was in the shower and tried to FaceTime with my mom, my sister, and my good friend. None of them picked up, but they all texted me later.
They are so smart these days! The 3 year old in my house figured out how to pry two keys off my brand new Razer Blade with a knife.
(he really is smart, and also trouble.)
My son is 2 and he loves to play with the Kid’s Mode on my wife’s phone. He plays with the camera and the video recorder, then laughs hysterically at the fuzed out selfies he takes.
Good stuff mate!
one of my favorite things to do is face time with my two year old nephew. seeing his smiling face and hearing his awesome laugh when he sees my dogs makes my heart happy and makes the many miles between us seem not so distant.