Born to Surf

My three-year old son recently uttered his first "dot com" words. They were, specifically, "noggin.com." As in: "I want to go to noggin.com."

Quick to the Web

Most parents of young children in the U.S. will recognize Noggin as a television network with educational programming aimed at preschoolers. My son is a big fan of Noggin shows, such as Blue's Clues, Sesame Street and Tiny Planets.

A few months ago, my wife and I checked out Noggin.com and showed it to our son. We figured we'd navigate the Web site for him, while he watched. We thought he would be, at best, amused, but not terribly interested. We didn't think he'd get the Web medium just yet.

Boy, were we very wrong. He liked it a lot. We gave him a few pointers and explanations. That's all he needed.

He quickly took control of the mouse and keyboard, and began clicking around the site, browsing its sections, exploring the games and features and even talking back at the machine. (The site is very interactive.)

We introduced him to other preschool Web sites. Now going online has become a favorite activity for him, along with riding in his tricycle, drawing with crayons and playing with toy trains. In fact, as I write this, he is sitting nearby playing a Noggin.com game about matching socks that have identical patterns.

Online, Naturally

At first I thought our son had to be especially gifted to be able to use this Web site so well. But when I told the story at our neighborhood park separately to two other mothers, they both told me that the same exact thing had happened with their three-year old children.

Thus, let there be no doubt that today's preschoolers are the first generation to grow up from birth immersed in the Internet age. As such, all things online come naturally to them.

The preschool Web sites we let him visit are generally wonderful, providing age-appropriate and educational games and activities. Unlike the video games he will, for better or worse, be exposed to later on, these sites truly contribute to his intellectual development.

Sadly, as my son becomes a computer user, the tough reality of the world of technology is beginning to hit him. Last week he complained that the computer we let him use most of the time (one that is about four years old) is not as fast as my wife's PC, to which he sometimes gets access from mommy's lap.

It's kind of spooky to have a three-year old already aware of performance differences among the household's different computers.

I imagine his vocabulary will soon include the words Pentium and Opteron. And, no doubt, the phrase: "Daddy, the stupid computer crashed again."