The mouse and the three year old

A couple of months ago, I set up an old original iMac in the lounge room for the my three year old son to use. It has been absolutedly facsinating watching my son interact.

Previously when he used my Powerbook I had noticed that that first thing he learnt were the keys that always had the same effect. He knew that if he pushed a DVD into the slot, then soon enough he would get to watch a movie. He would like to listen to his Play School music or whatever in iTunes, and soon learnt that F4 and F5 controlled the volume and that F11 exposed the background picture of himself and his younger brother. He would use the right arrow key to skip any songs he didn't like, but this only worked if iTunes was in the foreground. The most bizarre thing is that I learnt this keyboard shortcut from him, so I have no idea how he learnt it :)

Now that he has the iMac to play with, he has become an expert with the mouse. He knows how to click (although not to double click) and he even knows how to click and drag (although he does this with two hands!).

Recently I noticed that he leap up to the table when he noticed my Powerbook was not being used, used the trackpad to select iTunes from the dock and then clicked play to start the song playing.

I think that I was almost eighteen before I first touched a mouse and it only had one button and even had a wire!