If You Were Stranded on an Island.....

Actually, no one that I know of is stranded on an island.

I mean, I'm still stranded in Week Two of boot camp but no one wants to hear my pain.

But remember that logic question that used to pop up in school every now and then:  If you were stranded on a desert island, what three things would you want with you, not counting people?

Well, I've got a variation of that question for you and I'm really interested to hear what you have to say.

If your child could have no electronic devices (iPads, iPods, iPhones, Android devices, tablets, e-readers, DVD players, etc...), what would they play with instead?

A little background on the reason for the question - Monday, Lily had a visit with her former speech therapist that we haven't seen in almost two years.  After an hour session with the Bird, she came out and asked me, "What exactly does Lily like to play?".

Of course, my immediate answer was the iPad.

Then she asked me, "Besides electronics, what does Lily like to do for fun?".

To which I answered, "Ummm.... Gimme a minute, here.  Ahhhh..... OK!  Got one!  She likes for her Dad to throw her on our bed!  Does that count?  Oh, and she likes to crawl under our covers and kind of "hide out".  Oops!  But that's with the iPad.  Oh, she likes this sensory tunnel thing that she combat crawls through, but.... oh no, that's with the iPad as well.  Soooo, did you mean like no electronics at all??"

And while I've noticed it before, I think it's the first time I voiced it out loud - My child does not really like to play anything.  Or at least, anything that's not electronic.

There are definitely worse problems and it's certainly not the end of the world but it does raise an interesting question.

Or at least, it's interesting to me.

While Lily has never been what I would call a "stellar play-er" (and I don't mean that in the sleazy sense, in case you were wondering), there was a time that she played.  She would drop balls down a marble run type toy.  She matched these little plastic puzzle cookies that looked like Oreos.  She spun plastic tops. She squeezed Play-doh, though it's always been so tempting to take just a small bite or two.  She looked at books, before she took to ripping them to bits.  She filled and emptied plastic eggs with little rubber bugs.

She does none of that anymore.

And she's not all that interested anymore.

Granted, she's 5 and some of those things might just fall by the wayside now that she's a little older.  But nothing non-electronic has really taken the place of any of these activities.

So of course, the first thing I thought of is to do the good ol' comparison thing that none of us are supposed to do but we all do anyway and take a casual "opinion poll" on the blog today.

In the next couple of days, I'll offer some conflicting reasons for this "lack of play" ("the mom" thinks, "the therapist" thinks....) and see what you think about that.

But for now, just answer this for me:

If your child could have no electronic devices (iPads, iPods, iPhones, Android devices, tablets, e-readers, DVD players, etc...), what would they play with instead?

On your mark...

Get set....

Comment! (or facebook or tweet or email....)