little techie.

January 4, 2013 5:22 PM

little techie. from the mind of a 5-year-old tech geek.

"My name is Summer Allen and I run the successful design blog Design is Mine. That kid above? That’s London, my five-year-old son. He likes technology and gadgets a whole lot. Seriously.

"Little Techie is a spot to showcase his “creations” and day-to-day life as a tiny little tech geek. Because sometimes being a geek is majorly awesome.

"FYI: everything (aside from things otherwise noted) is made by London. While other kids are playing with action figures and watching cartoons, he’s drawing and building iPhones. Cool, eh?"

posted by Blazecock Pileon (24 comments total)

My sister raised her two kids off the grid in a cabin with oil lamps and no TV. My nephew, when he was about 5, cut the front out of a shoe box and made scrolled paper cutouts of landscapes with figures of dragons that could be cranked back and forth while shadow puppet-like figures on pencil stalks were manipulated from below within the changing scenes.

Now, 20 years later, she proudly pulls this contraption out at a family gathering to show just how successful her plan was, how his creativity was allowed to blossom. He says, "Mom, I was just trying to make a TV because you wouldn't let us have one."
posted by StickyCarpet at 5:50 PM on January 4 [19 favorites]

Kids sure are interesting reflections of their parent's obsessions.
posted by any major dude at 6:00 PM on January 4 [17 favorites]

something something baseless judgement
posted by odinsdream at 6:14 PM on January 4 [1 favorite]

Very derivative stuff. He'll probably end up working for...
posted by found missing at 6:15 PM on January 4 [1 favorite]

Did anyone else look at this and think, just buy this kid a tablet!
posted by Joe Chip at 6:15 PM on January 4 [2 favorites]

I think he's very creative but needs to be exposed to more sources of inspiration.
posted by arcticseal at 6:25 PM on January 4 [6 favorites]

This is MeFi's Own waxpancake's nephew!
posted by mathowie at 6:31 PM on January 4 [2 favorites]

Kids sure are interesting reflections of their parent's obsessions.

You don't have kids. Kids like what they like and no amount of prodding or modeling by their parents will change it for good or ill.
posted by DU at 6:44 PM on January 4 [2 favorites]

Kids like what they like and no amount of prodding or modeling by their parents will change it for good or ill.

Education being an important input.
posted by mattoxic at 6:55 PM on January 4

Somebody get that kid a Pikachu.
posted by Nomyte at 7:13 PM on January 4

Kids like what they like and no amount of prodding or modeling by their parents will change it for good or ill.

Exactly. An example I've shared before: my mother tried to keep toy guns away from me and my brother when we were really young. But when my brother picked up a toy cow, held it by the body and pointed the tail at my mom and said "bang bang," she realized kids how good kids are at make-believe.

As a kid, I really liked barbed wire, and I was upset that the only book on barbed wire at the library was a reference book. My family lived in the 'burbs, and there wasn't a lot of range life or wild west around me. Kids are partially mirrors of their parents, partially their own little people with their own weird little interests and fixations.
posted by filthy light thief at 7:13 PM on January 4 [3 favorites]

Did anyone else look at this and think, just buy this kid a tablet!

A ritalin or two should sort him out, for sure.
posted by PeterMcDermott at 7:19 PM on January 4 [3 favorites]

As the father of a 3 month old I am not sure how to feel about this.
posted by daHIFI at 7:35 PM on January 4

You don't have kids. Kids like what they like and no amount of prodding or modeling by their parents will change it for good or ill.

I do have kids, they just love me and want to be like me. Sorry if that isn't your experience.
posted by any major dude at 7:45 PM on January 4 [3 favorites]

Did anyone else look at this and think, just buy this kid a tablet!

My daughter has a tablet (thanks to her grandparents), and she still enjoys making iPhones out of various materials and pretending to talk on them. She also drives her pedal car around with shopping bags hung on the back of the seat while talking on her fake iPhones (which is not by example, unless her mother is lying to me.) Lately, she's been running around taking "pictures" of people on a cardboard iPhone. *Click.*

Kids like what they like and no amount of prodding or modeling by their parents will change it for good or ill.

That's why you have to embrace their desires and guide them to responsible execution of those desires, I think. Time will tell if it works, or if my kids will murder me in my sleep before they're 18.

I do have kids, they just love me and want to be like me. Sorry if that isn't your experience.

I'll keep that in mind if I ever see your daughter running around in a princess dress that she adores, singing the fifth song about butts that she's made up this week at the top of her lungs.
posted by davejay at 8:27 PM on January 4 [8 favorites]

Very cute. My son, at that age, was obsessed with the garbage truck's robot arm. I finally found a working toy version to give him....when he was 19. heh
posted by maggieb at 8:57 PM on January 4 [1 favorite]

Amazing how much the products of your own child's imagination exceed the products of every other child that ever existed, in the eyes of a parent.
posted by dg at 9:39 PM on January 4

Aye, verb, aye.
Once adverb again.
posted by Mblue at 9:51 PM on January 4

So I just wonder how much this tumblr feeds back into the mind of the five-year-old. How much he does this because, when he's done it before, it's appeared on this website and been shown to him.

No judgment, really. We all do stuff like that. It's called molding our kids. We can pretend they develop their own interests, but they have to pick from what we and others make available to them, and the emphasis we give matters.
posted by gurple at 9:56 PM on January 4 [1 favorite]

Apple's success is built on hiding the technical from consumers. Apple stopped being 'techie' a long while ago when they made all complex applications that do hard things into simple to use applications that do one thing. I've seen pictures of both grand mothers and monkeys using and loving apple products. By reductio ad grand ma monkey, Apple is the non-techie's toy.

I think this post is better titled something like 'little crafty.' Super talented kid but I see more creative than technical spirit depicted. The kid who will be going to MIT in 2020's is probably making robots or playing with proteins now. I don't know, but my advice to his folks would be to be mindful to not to kill the orange tree trying to make it an apple tree.
posted by astrobiophysican at 10:14 PM on January 4 [5 favorites]

In China he could be making iPhones for real.
posted by mazola at 12:09 AM on January 5 [7 favorites]

I do have kids, they just love me and want to be like me. Sorry if that isn't your experience.

Let's assume young children love their parents, because that is overwhelmingly the case even if you beat them or deprive them of iPhones. But while children do learn through mimicry, they are not a universal package. Some children are little "mini me" versions of their parents, and some are intriguingly random in their interests. Neither is a case for "sorry."
posted by DarlingBri at 5:05 AM on January 5

While other kids are playing with action figures and watching cartoons, he’s drawing and building iPhones.

Couldn't she have just said, "here's why my kid is cool" without sniping at how other kids spend their time? He's a cute kid. His designs are neat. Some other kid probably draws the most amazing Spiderman you've ever seen and makes web shooters out of cardboard boxes and yarn.

Kids are cool, even if they (gasp!) watch TV.
posted by kimberussell at 6:48 AM on January 5 [1 favorite]

I do have kids, they just love me and want to be like me. Sorry if that isn't your experience.

Same here. They also love completely different things. One can't stand the sight of blood (or, until recently, even the WORD blood). Another loves anything weaponry related. Needless to say, neither of their parents has modeled either of these behaviors.

To reiterate: Kids like what they like. If they happen to like what YOU like, that's a coincidence.
posted by DU at 11:05 AM on January 5