Toddlers and technology - a match made in heaven it seems. Don't know about you about for us, Noah had discovered his love for household electronics at the age of 6 months. He could barely sit up but had already figured out that there's something magical about all those little gadgets in the house. He's been on a mission to explore them (or dismantle them) ever since. For while we managed to keep him entertained with broken or old radios, remote controls, digital camers, etc. We even resorted to some borrowed battery-operated toys like mobile phones to satisfy his hunger for exploring all things electronic. In the end of course he came to the conclusion that broken gadgets or toys are far less interesting than the real thing. So he returned his attention to our beloved stereos.

After a while I changed my tactics when it came to his desire to explore. I was still keen to make sure he doesn't break stuff but got very tired of the old "NO - DON'T TOUCH". So I sat down with him and showed him how to use the stereo properly. This was a bit tough at first - after all he was barely one at the time ... but he actually started getting the hang of it very quickly. Amazingly he was able to recognise which way round CDs have to go in to the CD player. Including blank CDs (like CDRs) which is not that easy if you when you think about it ... both sides are silver(ish) ... some of my colleagues at work still struggle with this at the age of 32. Now of course I've opened the flood gates and my little DJ-to-be wants to figure out all the various functions. Cool thing is though, he uses it more or less as intended. So I'm no longer worried about him breaking it - more like, what kind of music he puts on and at what volume. But hey - it's a small price to pay :-)

-Stef

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