Paul Brislen: Tiny tyrant loves all creatures great and small

COMMENT

I worry about the future, I really do. Here I am, in my 30s, facing stiff competition from a 2-year-old. My daughter is growing up in the online world and thinks it's perfectly normal to surf the net. She can't spell but, like art critics everywhere, she knows what she likes.

She's conquered the first problem inherent in surfing the net when you can't reach the keyboard - you get your dad to do it all for you. I can be walking in the door, watching TV, in the middle of dinner or even fast asleep and a small voice will yell out, "Cat dog! Cat dog!" and I know my services are needed.

First among favourites is Google's image search facility. Rather than searching the net for words, boring when you can't read, she searches for animals. Or rather, I search, she commands.

My 2-year-old tyrant loves cats, dogs, horses, pigs, cows, chickens, giraffes, lions, tigers and just about all other creatures great and small.

Google's image search makes this painlessly easy for me, and my browser remembers previous searches, so simply typing in "p" brings up "puppies".

But even the most ardent proto-vet gets a little bored simply making animal sounds at the screen (okay, I admit it, that's me making the sounds - she just laughs).

Her second favourite site makes great use of something I always considered a major evil - Flash. The Flash plug-in allows tiny and often annoying animations to cavort on your screen. Apparently this is great when you're 2, and so I find myself bookmarking a singing horses site.

We can spend ages sitting quietly clicking on the horses as if we were conductors to make them sing in harmony. Actually, it's quite relaxing, but only if you time them well. The second horse from the left can be a bit of a problem as he starts off quite low and slow.

Sometimes, though, we need something a bit raucous to really stir the blood and make the floor shake. For that we have another Flash site, that never stops with its incessant "badgering" (sorry, couldn't resist) except to introduce the odd cry of "mushroom" or even "snake". Take a look. Trust me, you'll need the humour of a 2-year-old to really appreciate its subtlety.

Eventually, though, the toddler's mother decrees "thou shalt stop thy badgering" and we're forced to kick back with a quieter site.

We live not far from Auckland Zoo and have zoo passes so we can visit at any time, but on a rainy day the zoo's excellent website is just as good. It could do with more photos of the animals, but I know in the years ahead she'll get more out of this site than the others. I can see us attending one of the Kiwi ZooSnooz sleepovers.

There are those out there who would be alarmed at the prospect of letting a toddler loose with a PC but, really, I'm astounded by my girl's ability to grasp these concepts. She knows that moving the mouse drags the pointer icon around. She hasn't mastered clicking, double clicking and right clicking, but then she's got me for that.

She knows what she likes and she's familiar with the technology. I tried fobbing her off with an old keyboard that wasn't plugged in to anything but that just didn't cut the mustard. She seeks gratification, and it had better be instant.

I hope she learns to be sceptical of what she's told online and I'll be sure to teach her safe surfing habits, and what better way to start than when she's first learning how to use a computer, but eventually she'll overtake me. I only hope it's not any time soon but when that day comes and I'm old and decrepit and alarmed at all the newfangled technology, she'll help me out with the odd web search.

I shall cry "Cat dog! Cat dog!" and she can keep me entertained. It's only fair, I feel.

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