Actually his favourite toys aren’t toys at all. He seems to understand that hammering away at a V-Tech activity centre won’t actually achieve anything, but a single deft depression of That Button That Daddy Explicitly Told Me Not To Touch will have much more exciting results (including said Daddy jumping up and growling amusingly).

His absolute favourite toy is the washing machine. This is button and knob nirvana, and as an added bonus it also has a hatch that you can concertedly pile clothes in to (and out of… and back into again… and out again… for hours).

Seriously, if we could just trust him with the powder and fabric conditioner we could buy a dozen washing machines and have quite a nice little laundry business on our hands.

Hmm, yep, even after thinking it through properly, I can’t see any flaw in that idea.

Really though, I shouldn’t be surprised that Tom seems to be turning into a little gadget freak. This is the world he was born in to. Even when he was very little I used to amuse him with toys and videos on an iPhone. Now he’s reached the stage where he can switch my iPhone on, slide the switch to unlock the screen, swipe through the screens of icons, find the folder full of toddler toys, and open up The Three Little Pigs story app; all in the time it takes to change a nappy.

For a little boy who can’t yet reliably make it across the front room without falling over, I find this seriously impressive.

Most birthdays and Christmases I’d get a Lego model. Starting with the basic building block sets, then the Space Lego sets with the fancy V-shaped wing bits, then the grown-up Technical Lego sets (you could tell they were grown-up because they had holes in).

I’d empty the bits out on the dining table. Lay out the immaculately-produced manual, and turn to the first page. Looking at the first diagram, finding the bits that matched the picture. Savouring the anticipation.

“Would you like me to help?” my Dad would ask. Innocently.

…

Twenty minutes later I’d be sitting, chin in hands, frustratedly watching my Dad make the model.

He wouldn’t get away with it for long. Mum would come in and say “oi! Let Simon make it!!” Dad would reluctantly relinquish the model.

I’d dismantle what he’d done and start again from scratch, silently vowing that when I was a Dad, I’d never barge in and monopolise my son’s toys.

No, I didn’t. Even writing that I realised I was kidding myself. I vowed that one day I’d barge in and monopolise MY son’s toys.

I’ve tried to deny it. When Tom got a lovely set of building blocks for his birthday, I tried to let him learn to play with them at his own pace.

It didn’t last long. I thought I’d just help a little.

Tom, quite rightfully, was having none of it.

But because there have been so many changes over the past twelve months, the year also seems to have lasted a lifetime. Which, I suppose, for Tom it has.

He got some nice presents, my mum and dad were particularly generous with a set of Brio building blocks and a Brio “Walk-On” trolley to cart them about with. It’s all very well made and has a bit of a “designer baby” feel.

Tom showed his appreciation by performing his first ever “non-human-assisted” walk. He even managed a bit of freestyle standing at the end!

That’s how babies minds work, I think, they thrive on discovered predictability. It’s not enough to try something once to see what happens, you have to do it again to see if what happened still happens. Then do it a dozen or so more times just to really be sure. While I watch Tom doing it, I can almost hear the little neurons in his bonce strengthening by repeated use.

Tom’s at an age where he’s still learning about the basic physical properties of the world around him, and predictability is important. Balls bounce, wheels roll, blocks stack or tumble.

One of Tom’s Christmas presents was an electronic activity centre. The V-Tech “My First Steps Walker”, a baby walker with a panel on the front featuring an electronic cornucopia of lights and buttons for little fingers to press. I’m a gadget freak, so it’s actually to my surprise that, where toys are concerned, I’ve become a bit of a Luddite. Because for all its electronic wizardry, the My First Steps Walker isn’t predictable, and that makes me question its value as a toy for very small kids.

Press the blue circular button marked with a “1” and a friendly lady’s voice will say “one!”, but press it again and it says instead “blue circle!”. So is the little tyke supposed to learn that blue circular buttons say “one”, or that buttons marked “1” say “blue circle”?

It gets worse than that; flip the wings of the yellow plastic butterfly and the whole gadget changes function. Now it’s not “teaching” about shapes and colours and numbers, it’s teaching about “music”. The blue circular button doesn’t say “blue” or “circle” or “one”; now it says “rock and roll!”, and launches into the least rock-and-roll bit of music you’ve ever heard.

Now, I know eventually Tom will need to learn that things aren’t predictable, and that most buttons on electronic gadgetry do different things at different times. Eventually, probably sooner rather than later, he’ll work out that a computer can do an infinite number of things with just a few dozen buttons. But first, I think, he needs the predictability. He need to press the blue circular button and for it to say “blue circle!” every time, so that he delights in the fact that he predicted it was going to say that.

I wouldn’t take the V-Tech walker away from him, because he enjoys bashing away at it, particularly the spinny cogs bit. But I don’t think it’s really teaching him much yet, and I’d much rather he spent an instructive 5 minutes repeatedly dropping the same ball into the same hole. Unpredictability can wait.

While it would be nice to keep his banana-smeared mitts completely off my expensive gadgetry, but Tom is remarkably persistent, and I’m basically a big softy, so it seemed easiest to track down some iPhone apps that were suitable for well-supervised baby play. Here are some of the best that I’ve found.

Bab Bab Lite
The “lite” represents the free version, the full version has more features but I found the basic functionality of the lite version perfectly adequate.

Bab Bab basically turns your iPhone into a baby rattle. Three shapes float around the screen, and shaking the iPhone makes them fly around, sparking vibrant patterns and musical chimes when they collide. The shapes can also be moved with a finger, making it a fairly tactile experience as well.

Everything about Bab Bab is delightfully Japanese, from the cutesy graphics to the bamboo-like clunking sound of the shapes colliding. It’s too simple to be entertaining for very long, and I’d question the sanity of letting a baby really shake an iPhone which is liable to be bouncing off the pavement a few seconds later, but it’s a great way to distract a little baby for a short while.

Peek-a-Bouncer
This is the iPhone version of one of the many baby games available on the excellent Kneebouncers web site. The Kneebouncers are a collection of friendly looking animals, all rendered in saturated primary hues. The idea is very simple, touching the screen causes it to open like a pair of curtains, revealing a random Kneebouncer who says “peek-a-boo!”. Releasing the screen closes the window again.

Great for babies who like playing peek-a-boo, but I found that Tom had trouble holding the iPhone in a way that wasn’t touching the screen somewhere, thus keeping the window permanently open. It would be nicer if the app used the iPhone’s multi-touch functionality to work out what the babies hands were doing and react accordingly.

Talking Carl
This isn’t really an app designed for babies, and I actually downloaded it for my own amusement but found Tom loved it. Talking Carl repeats back everything you say to him, in a squeaky high-pitched voice. It took Tom a little while to work out what was going on, but now he has little shouting competitions with Carl, each trying to out-squeak the other. Tom also likes the way Carl reacts to being prodded with a finger; different animations such as Carl laughing when he’s tickled and crying “OW!” when you poke him in the eye.

The Little Red Hen
One of the first apps I downloaded for Tom’s sake, this little animated storybook is very well executed. With The Little Red Hen, you can choose to have the story read to you (by a cute-sounding little girl with an English accent) or you can read aloud yourself. Each page has a limited amount of interactivity; click the hen and she clucks, click the cat and she meows, etc. Nothing ground-breaking but just the right level of interactivity for a little baby to understand and enjoy.

Someone with a bear that’s reached the end of it’s useful life, or maybe just someone with a naughty child who doesn’t deserve a bear, could take it along and watch it being carefully rendered back into it’s constituent parts.

“Look Johnny, this is the machine where they remove Mr. Fluffles ears!”

I’m certain it would be popular, especially just after Christmas.