Happy birthday?

Well, I do have a 3-year-old nephew with an upcoming birthday and so it was not for purely research reasons that I purchased an iTeDDy this week...although I am tempted to keep it a little longer! I liked the fact that my family was able to make a short video for my nephew in which we sang “Happy birthday” to him and then uploaded the video onto the MP3 player, along with family photographs and some of his favourite songs. OK, so no doubt when he is able to, some of these files will be the first he deletes, but we liked the idea! The manufacturers are emphasising the receptiveness of iTeDDy to user-generated content, so it will be interesting to examine how families use this feature, if at all, and how children react to it. I will report here if my nephew howls with joy or horror at his family’s rendition of the birthday song coming straight at him from his iTeDDy’s tummy...