7 Reasons Not to Buy Your Child an iPad for Christmas When it comes to Christmas, I'm a sucker for the "wow" gift (and if anyone has any ideas for my 8-year-old daughter, let me know). I want to surprise and delight as much as anyone (and as an interfaith family, we alternate doing the big gifts for Hanukkah or for Christmas - the timing means it's Christmas this year). But there's one big gift I won't go for: the tablet computer in any form, and that includes the game-and-video playing Kindle Fire). The children for whom I could conceivably buy an iPad or other tablet are 7, 8, and 9. My 12-year-old bought his own this summer. Any of them would be delighted to receive any tablet. I'm not opposed to either expensive gifts, if you can afford them, or the joys of gadgetry (my first iPad arrived the day they came out). Still, I can't even imagine wrapping up one of these and tucking it under the tree. No school, few organized sports. This is the time for building elaborate Lego structures, concocting stories with a dollhouse, getting lost in a book or playing a family round of that board game you never manage to start before 8 p.m. the rest of the year. It's a time for Wii marathons and Easy-Bake Ovens, not Candy Crush. My 12-year-old already has an iPad. He saved his allowance, and he did a fair amount of manual labor over the summer so that he would have enough to take a new iPad to school in the fall (the middle school requested that students bring one this year) rather than the old first-generation version I offered him. He misplaces it in the house occasionally, but in general it's a treasured object, with a screen much cleaner than the one on mine. We have desktop computers that they can use on weekends, and an old iPad that's become the family gaming version. That's enough. They're computers, and powerful communication devices. Texting, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter - there will be plenty of time for those things when my children are older. Possessing their own device would suggest to them that they're ready to dive in. A shared family iPad does not invite a child to create that individual online world. And, ours doesn't have a camera. My 12-year-old respects that with his iPad. His younger siblings don't have even his (limited) self-control - to some extent, his ability to follow the rule relies on his not being as interested in iPad games as his siblings, and he has no interest in social media. More opportunity is not a good idea. Looking for a good book? "The Complete Calvin and Hobbes" is expensive, but it is hands-down the best gift I have ever given. A few years later, and the books are never all in the box, and every child pores over every page. Even if Mommy approved, Santa still wouldn't shop at Best Buy.