When returning by plane from a recent trip abroad, I was sitting behind two parents and their young daughter, who despite the rather bumpy ride was behaving really well.  As the journey wore on, she became a little restless so to keep her entertained, her mother took out her iPod Touch, started an app and they both played a game.  Happiness for her and the other passengers ensued and from where I was sitting, it seemed like a great way to engage with a young person in today’s technology-rich world.

The App Store is full of apps suitable for children, both educational and for fun, but not everyone seems to think that encouraging their use is such a good idea.  I stumbled upon an article by Jim Taylor, Ph.D, on psychologytoday.com entitled iPhone: High-tech Child Abuse, where he most certainly doesn’t agree with using an iPhone to placate youngsters.

The essence of the piece is that simply giving your child an iPhone, iPod Touch or iPad and letting them play with it could do everything from potentially harming their long-term development, if done with increased frequency, to ill-preparing them for a boring job.  He singles out the iPhone because of its prevalence and mentions ‘its myriad of (sic) child-mollifying apps’.

While it’s undoubtedly true that simply giving one of these devices to a child to shut it up is perhaps not the best parenting example, what a shame that the article doesn’t go on to talk about the many interactive apps available that parents can use together with their child.  Bonding, engaging and learning using technology is the positive aspect of all three of these machines, and dismissing them entirely is to do these devices, the App Store and even technology itself a disservice rather than your children.

To illustrate this, here are four enjoyable, educational applications for the iPhone and iPad which encourage parent and child to play together.  This is just a small selected too, as we have chosen only those released during the last week or so.

Music Learning Adventure.

The latest application from the Emmy Award-winning Juno Company.  Teach your children all about music and harmony with the beautiful videos and interactive tasks.  The are five characters featured in nine videos and plenty of interactive features, all of which you’ll want to experience together.  Released on the 9th July, this is currently free for both the iPhone and the iPad but only for a limited time.  We heartily recommend picking this up.  Free.

KosmicMathHD Family.

Available in a free Lite version, a Family edition or an Educational version aimed at schools and teachers, KosmicMathHD Family has now come to the iPad too.  Combining maths and space travel is a great idea, as is the clever system of moving the ‘game’ along as your child’s ability grows.  The app can be integrated with an online portal which gathers information and provides charts to indicate their progression and how it relates to grade levels.  The price varies depending on which version you pick, but we’ve linked to the iPad app.  $4.99/£2.99.

Mother Goose Interactive Nursery Rhymes.

An iPad only interactive book, here you’ll find the popular Mother Goose nursery rhymes all with beautiful original artwork.  With the words on the screen and the interactive elements, this allows parents to read along with their kids or let them try it out for themselves with the built-in narration.  $4.99/£2.99.

Tiny Garden.

Suitable for the iPhone, iPod Touch and the iPad, Tiny Garden is designed for young children who are learning to speak.  By using animation, bright colours and an interactive environment, the app encourages word association.  What we like most about this one is that a parent can add their own voiceover to the pictures, so language, accent and pronunciation are all under their control.  $1.99/£1.19.

When used in the right way, the iPhone and iPad, just like TV, can be an educational, stimulating and fun thing for the family to do together.  Who knows, all this playing about with amazing technology from a young age could see them grow up wanting to create, develop or engineer the next generation’s iPhone or iPad-alike, something we don’t think sounds so terrible!