My 21-month-old, Jacob, is good with electronics. He loves anything that has buttons, and if those buttons make noise or cause lights to flash, so much the better. From a very young age Jacob has sought out whatever electronic devices he could get his hands on, and attempted to master them.

Jacob engaged in one of his favourite pastimes – playing with the stereo
One of Jacob’s best feats was locking me out of my own laptop. You see, my laptop has facial recognition software, which I didn’t enable. However, somehow Jacob enabled it. And, of course, his sweet little face was in front of the webcam at the time. So my computer decided that it belonged to him. The next time I fired it up, it considered me an intruder.
Jacob also likes to put CDs in the CD player, and play them. He even adjusts the volume to his liking – which is very loud, in case you were wondering. He especially loves to do this with his dad’s combination CD player / clock radio, while his dad is still sleeping. He’s messed up other people’s computers, learned how to make our computer print lined notepaper, called his dad on my cellphone and set his dad’s car alarm into deep panic mode. He just has a knack, my toddler. In fact, when 5-year-old Hannah can’t make something work, she enlists her little brother’s help.
I’m sure that everyone likes to see themselves in their children. So I might be biased in this, but as an engineer I take a certain pride in Jacob’s love of all things electronic. It’s true that he isn’t always as gentle as one would hope. And it’s true that it’s sort of a pain when he locks me out of my own computer. But I like to see that problem-solving process, and love of technology, in my child all the same. Maybe he’ll be a programmer just like his mama. Programmers get to push a lot of buttons.
The truth is that I was never as into taking things apart and figuring them out as Jacob seems to be. So maybe I can’t really take credit for his button-y love. It’s also true that my husband, while not an engineer, is pretty adept with electronics as well. It might not be all me. But my heart swells with pride at my little electronics whiz all the same. No doubt he’ll be even more technically adept than me one day. Hopefully not before he’s 6, though.
Do you see yourself in your children and their interests? Tell me!