Surveying Parents of Preschool Children about Digital and Analogue Play and Parent-Child Interaction.

The addition of digital toys to the child's toy box has resulted in the development of the new 'digital play', which differs from analogue play. Research shows that digital toys are available from infancy onwards and are significantly changing the way children engage in play and communicate with parents during play. How this influences the child's development must be established. The choice of toys and the manner in which they are used depend greatly on the parents. In the present study, parents' opinions and experiences of their child's digital and analogue play were explored in order to gain insight into the parents' perceptions of the impact of different types of play on their child's development. We were particularly interested in the differences in a child's engagement with a toy and the child-parent interaction and communication. In this descriptive study, we administered a questionnaire in order to collect data from 306 parents of children of an average age of 3.6 years. The results show that parents perceived traditional toys as the most stimulating toys for a toddler's sensory, motor, cognitive, and socio-emotional development. During analogue play, significantly more parent-child interaction, as well as more language input from parents and toddlers, occurred. Parents also used different intervention and mediation strategies with different types of toys.

Parental Perceptions of Child's Play in the Post-Digital Era: Parents' Dilemma with Digital Formats Informing the Kindergarten Curriculum.

Digital technology affordance has been recognized as a social and learning tool, and the requirements for digitalizing the kindergarten curriculum have been present for decades. Digitalization in a child's early years can present conflict with parents, as the societal and economic demands of digitalized society for a child's digital technology use are in dissonance with guidelines and recommendations of health organizations that caution against preschool children's technology use. Kindergarten curricular reform in Slovenia was conducted in the 1990s. In this period, the use of digital learning technology and digital play for the development of children learning predispositions and early literacy was already recognized. At the time of curriculum design, it integrated some elements of digital learning technology. Now, 30 years after the design of the new curriculum, we are facing the post-digital era. Learning technology in the early years is a matter of partnership with parents; accordingly, this descriptive survey study includes a non-randomized sample of 306 parents. We are considering how child's play is structured in the primary environment and how parents perceive digital technology in the current post-digital age of seamless, digitally saturated social practices. Parents are aware of the risks of technology and of its benefits for learning. The findings show correlations between a child's digital screen technology use and parents' attitudes and perceptions of digital play. Parents that offer digital screen technology to a child have less agreeable attitudes regarding its possible risks to a child.