I am SO PROUD that, starting last week, Hunter has been asking “What’s that in Chinese, mama?” for objects that he spots and likes. He then thoughtfully repeats after me, trying to remember the Chinese word for it.

I realise that a lot of kids his age in Singapore can understand or speak both English and Mandarin, but it’s especially hard for Hunter because we don’t speak Mandarin at home and neither do my parents nor all my relatives. This means he has zero exposure to the language.

I’m chalking it all up to his Cheng Zhu play school. Despite only being 2-hours long, twice a week, it’s obviously had an effect on him. He can sing a bunch of Mandarin songs, speak a fair amount, and understand quite a lot.

But this whole unprompted questioning of what an object is in Chinese totally takes the cake for me.

I’m overjoyed and relieved that he shows an interest and also takes the initiative to learn a different language! 🙂

Speaking of learning, have any of you parents realised how FREAKISHLY QUICK kids learn how to use technology??

Chris and I were the sort of judge-y folk (before we were parents) that were all “Tsk. Look at that poor child. Given an iPhone/iPad to shut them up and the parents aren’t being proper parents and talking to the child. WE WOULD NEVER DO THAT.”

LOL.

In the past two weeks, we’ve TOTALLY CAVED and now miracle of miracles! Hunter has his own iPad. It was a (very generous) gift from my parents and hooboy he loves it – what kid doesn’t?

I’d heard and seen many amazing stories of how quickly kids pick up how to use an iPad, but seeing it with my own two eyes makes me realise how powerful an iPad is. It seriously makes your kid seem like some sort of whiz kid genius, LOL!!

The very first time Hunter used the iPad, it was hilarious. He would PRESS all 10 fingers on it. HARD. And then DRAGGGG all 10 fingers around and wonder why nothing would work.

But by the fifth time he used the iPad, he did this:

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cYaoHdWCuZk

 
Dude, I’M DULY IMPRESSED!!! He could use two fingers and drag two letters at the same time into their right spot. I mean, a kid wouldn’t be able to do this in real life at this age (at least I don’t think so), but with the iPad, they can.

And that’s not all.

He has an insatiable love for all things Thomas, so he loves his Thomas apps. One of them has a memory game – you know, the one where you flip two cards and try and match them up?

Well, I guess he must’ve figured out how to get to that memory game within the app, and…….. taught himself how to play the memory game.

Because within 1 week of first using his iPad, I caught him playing the memory game and actually doing it! Plus, going at a fairly quick pace. So much so that I wasn’t even sure he was doing it right (and not just pressing random cards for fun) until he cleared the whole game within a few minutes. Repeatedly.

httpv://youtu.be/yyFcbFUDEDQ

Pretty cool, huh?

OK I know you can’t really tell in the video.. but it’s hard to video him when we’re out and he’s using the iPad, especially because I’m feeding him at the same time. I wanted to do one where he completed the entire puzzle in a couple of minutes but never got around to videoing that… oops.

We limit his iPad usage to ONLY at the table and ONLY when we’re out. So no more than 15 mins a day, which I think is fine for a 2 year old. But he’s already addicted and will still try his luck whenever he spots it lying around. D’oh.

So anyway, the long and short of it is, if you wanna see your kid in I’m-super-smart mode, get an iPad pronto!!!

And this whole time…. all Carter can manage is to say “da da”, his only party trick 😉 Poor bub. You’ll catch up very soon, I promise!!

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-AAPvE27iQE