I would see coloring books as occasional handwriting and fine motor practice for a kid who likes them and totally different from free form art. Many of my concerns about video games relate to the pacing and potential affects on the brain as well as acting as a captivating draw that may prevent a child from learning to deal with boredom or engage in play that requires more skill areas such as sensory, motor skills, etc. Can't say I've got that same concern about coloring books.

Nor is it mine... but neither is limiting her future options. I see my job as a parent as providing her with an opportunity to develop a rich set of skills, then standing by and watching what she does with them.



I don't see much value in using my experiences with technology as a benchmark for my child. She'll be an adult in 11 years, and in the last 11 years, the field has changed dramatically. I see no reason for that rate of change to decelerate in the next 11 years.

My DD7 did a writing project on her computer, which is a decision she made herself. But since her school experience is such a mess (she's in 1st grade, ready for 2nd grade, and jumped into a G/T class full of G/T 3rd graders) she needed a lot of assistance and some heavy editing. She was angry/frustrated/overwhelmed by the assignment enough as it is... it would have been 10x worse if she'd had to do all those revisions by hand.
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I don't think anyone has to push computer literacy on children these days, especially gifted ones. I think that computer illiteracy can be pushed, though. Restricting screen time is fine if it's necessary... as I said, in my DD's case, we don't restrict simply because she's self-regulating pretty well. If her behavior were different, our policy would be different. But there's restrictive and then there's prohibitive.

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