Worrying rise of the iPad childminder

At seven months old, he adores the device, and happily taps away on the screen with his chubby fingers, popping bubbles in his favourite video game, or watching YouTube clips of animals, numbers and animated nursery rhymes.

After 15 minutes, his mother Catherine prises the tablet from his grasp and lays Jonah in his cot, where he instantly falls asleep. Catherine, 32, offers a prayer of thanks to Apple — maker of the iPad — for another peaceful evening.

‘He’s been using it twice a day, for up to half an hour, since he was four months old,’ admits Catherine. ‘It’s incredibly useful in getting him to settle at night, something we’d been struggling to do.

‘I’ve nicknamed it the ultimate baby soother. It’s so much better than any of his other toys for calming him down.’

Catherine and Richard are in good company: recently Prince William revealed how 20-month-old George is truly hooked on his parents’ tablet. On a walkabout at a technology event in New York recently, William confessed: ‘George has been playing iPad games and loves them.’

With apparent seriousness, he added that giving his baby son a hand-held tablet was ‘a good way to teach him the inner workings of electronics’.

When those comments were reported, what surprised me was the absence of a slightest whisper of concern that a toddler, who hasn’t yet mastered language, has been so exposed to technology he already has favourite computer games.

But that silence is, itself, telling. Instead of traditional playthings like train sets and dolls, computer tablets are fast becoming children’s favourite toys, and many parents see nothing wrong with it.

These days more babies than ever are being entertained with these devices. A poll by parenting website Babies.co.uk found that half of parents routinely allow infants to play with their iPhone or tablet. One in seven allow their tot to spend more than four hours a day playing with them.

(dailymail.co.uk)