Kids don't fucking know the difference you dirty fucks.

Amazon going full Facebook-at-their-worst. Nice to know.

I'm going off on a big tangent here, but hear me out (or ignore me entirely because there's political content, but in a practical context - I think). Humans don't need much of an excuse to reach for an easy answer, and parenting on its own is probably one of the most difficult undertakings in the human experience. "Modern life" is becoming increasingly complex to navigate, we are bombarded with attention sucking ... everything, giving us the sense that time is so scarce that the easiest, most immediate answer is the only option. This is being made true as much for parenting - give them the electronic device - as it is for work problems - MVP, band-aid, temporary becomes permanent.

Amazon product and marketing is an accelerant of this. Encouragement of the ever decreasing time frame of what is already ridiculous short-termism. Amazon are obviously not alone in this, but neither are they working against it or wanting to leave any possible addiction-money profit on the table. This is one of the reasons I'm obsessed with blocking advertising. The more they can convince you of the importance of "all the things" the more of their things you need to buy to create more time for yourself - at the expense of your child. Nice, Jeff. Nice.

On the quality of parenting: My children's grandparents, on both sides of the family, have been a great help. I guess we've been lucky in having them available, but also (maybe accidentally) smart in not moving away from the local support network of family in order to pursue better/bigger/higher-income careers. Where this relates to the above is that, the pace of life, in combination with having children, almost requires a family support network, more specifically grandparents since they're likely retired or in the twilight of their careers and therefore have more time flexibility. Something that's become increasingly obvious to me is the 'life' advantage bestowed upon those with a local family support network over those without. This is something that often puts migrants well behind locals where my anecdotal-only example is someone I used to work with who had three kids but no extended family, and therefore school drop-offs, pick-ups, doctor's appointments and all the other general activities and emergencies that go with having kids is spread out over two people (mum and dad) rather than a full extended family network.

The point I'm trying to make is that this marketing of electronic pacifiers to parents is a symptom of the (unsustainable) increasing 'urgency' of the pace of modern life, which can be made manageable with a decent extended family support network. The advantages of which are compounding.

Something I heard that really stuck with me was: Children form most of their behavioural patterns by the age of three (or maybe it was 5), and so those early years are the most important in shaping them. It requires less work to get something right the first time, than having to fix something that's broken. This isn't to say things can't go wrong, but what it means is to do your best for those years to have a chance at being able to reclaim more of yourself at a later stage.

Ultimately, if you "just give them the tablet" now, you'll be "just giving them the tablet" for the rest of your life.

/ridiculously tangential rant (just had to get some of the thoughts written down to see how they turned out)