I am not yet a parent. Though I am an aunt to 3 toddlers, I still do not make parental decisions on a daily basis, and the only experience of raising anything I have is my dog. And she’s kind of a jerk sometimes.
One tool I’ve seen, especially in younger parents, is the use of electronics at a young age. This is a pretty controversial subject in the parenting world, according to my mommy friends.
Are they too young to be playing games on your iPad? Are they too young to always be looking at a screen? I know I want my kids to play outside and experience the dirt and the bugs, because as small as that sounds, those experiences help shape us as adults. However, there can be many advantages to those games and learning apps you see the child in the booth next you is playing. A study done by Common Sense Media says that there is a difference between active time and passive time playing on tablets.
There are many learning apps and games for children of all ages. I’ve played games with my nephew in the backseat of his mom’s car as we’ve gone out to lunch. He might be smarter than me and he’s only 3. He speaks complete sentences and knows bigger words than most 3 year olds do, and his mother attributes those abilities, in part, to the things he’s learned from those games. In fact, there is a new iPad learning app that is designed to help children and young adults with autism to significantly improve their conversational skills:
“I Can Have A Conversation With You”
This new app was created by speech pathologist Karen Kabaki-Sisto. It is a social language therapy system that teaches children with autism how to begin a conversation, maintain one, and end one in a much better capacity than before. It teaches them gestures and body language, how to understand and express words, and feelings that might occur during a conversation with someone and to handle them.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC) tells us that autism rates have risen over the last ten years, so now is a perfect time for Kabaki-Sisto to put her learning app out there to see what it can do. The goal of this app is to create a non-conventional and interactive approach to the current hurdle that people with autism face. This app is available for iPad only and is in the iTunes Store for $29.99. The response to this app from parents and other speech therapists so far has been incredibly positive. This app is not only for children with autism, but can help so many other children who might have Asperger’s or other social and pragmatic communication disorders.
While iPads and other handheld devices seem to be taking over the world, I find comfort in the fact that there are learning opportunities with these devices. Not only for children but adults as well.
How A Learning App Can Help Improve Conversational Skills Of Kids With Autism
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