Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy I was chastised by the principal today

Re: your original concern, it seems to me the obsession is going to be self-limiting. How long till he finishes Dreambox -- a few months? It's not like this is a long-term lifestyle choice that has sucked up his entire childhood.

As for the principal, I wonder if he is feeling territorial, along the lines of "don't try to teach your kid, that's our job, you'll do it all wrong." (A position I find laughable given the general success of homeschooling, but a lot of professional educators hold it.) But he didn't want to come out and say it, so he fell back on the "too much screen time" trope. So, another reason not get into this with him. If I'm right, any attempt to address what he said (e.g. "this is a parenting issue, not an educational one") won't accomplish anything, because what he said is not what he meant.

Dbat: reading on an electronic device shouldn't count as "screen time." And that doesn't just mean e-readers, it means reading a newspaper on the web, or browsing Wikipedia, or anything else where you're basically just reading. Your brain is processing written text, which is very different from interacting with the three-dimensional world, but which our culture has agreed is extremely important and worth the time investment.

In contrast, the negative effects of "screen-time" are about the effects of watching video rather than watching (and interacting with) events in the real 3D world; and "playing" in a 2D screen-based environment (e.g. video games) rather than spending valuable childhood play-time manipulating real 3D objects and moving your body around.