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Comment by techdemic | Hacker News Reader

What does a one-year old do on an iPad (or other tablet for that matter)?

For those who are parents--are there certain apps/games you let your young ones play around on? Or, is the behavior demonstrated by the child in the video learned primarily by way of observation?

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Definitely. There's a number of blogs dedicated to apps for toddlers. Not sure about a one-year-old, but my two-year-old was finger painting, dragging letters onto words, and rearranging dinosaur parts, and browsing YouTube for videos of trash trucks (he got his older sisters to enter the search terms). My original iPad is basically a dedicated kid computer. The older kids write school papers on it (Pages + keyboard dock), the younger kids play games (educational and otherwise) and sometimes Netflix videos. We do have an XO laptop, and it only gets dug out of the bin when one of the kids is playing "going to work" and needs a faux laptop to lug.

I love the idea that little kids who love watching garbage trucks are now getting their older siblings to go find Youtube videos of them.

Imitating their parents. Something that I believe is quite deep in our brains, children can't help it. My daughter imitates how my wife picks up the phone when she answers a call. It is hilarious they are a perfect little mirror for all the things you constantly do. They copy them like a true comedian, overdoing the most significant aspect and dismissing the "context" that make you feel normal while usually doing them.

Look up an app called "Rattle". My kid figured that one out at six weeks.

Also, "pocket pond" style things work pretty well with infants. Basically anything where stuff happens when you touch the screen. Though it helps to pick apps where it's difficult to pull up blocking menus. It's amazing how quickly a random-clicking toddler will find his way to the purchase screen in the App Store in most apps.

My one year old loves looking a pictures on the iPad. But she is really just as fascinated with flicking the home screens back and forth and seeing what happens when she presses the different little pictures.

I know of one 1yo who loves scrolling back and forth on pages of text on his parents' iPods.

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