What is that thing making all the clicking noise that seems to entrance Mommy and Daddy for hours at a time?  I need to get my chubby little hands on that.  - I can only assume this is pretty close to what my two year old is thinking.

We keep our family computer in community space and I work from home a couple days a week primarily on my laptop.  This provides a too tempting opportunity for the little hands in our house to pound away at the keyboard.  All too many times I have returned to a spreadsheet representing my mornings work to find cells filled with “vvvvvvvvvvvvvvd. if8wa9vikjllkkkkk       k”.

One option is for my kids to think their input is a magical make Daddy freak out device.  The other is to lock the keyboard input to open files and give them an outlet for creativity and learning.

Enter CrazyLittleFingers, quite obviously created by a parent this program provides the solution.  Now, your “bubs” (as the author affectionately refers to them) can explore away and get key specific images and sounds as a reward.  Pressing ‘c’ will display a car and play an accompanying car starting sound, pressing ‘r’ will crow and provide a rooster image.  You can customize the images and even link to quicktime videos.  Ctrl-Alt-Del will get you out (if your kids figure that out before age 4, buy them a computer).

There is no built in solution to juice spilled sticky keys or removed keys so if you would rather discourage input on your computer all together there is also ToddlerTrap which disables mouse and keyboard input completely with zero reward (also good for cleaning).  True, kids need to learn appropriate behavior and respect for property and space but I will submit that most times adults need to learn to chill the heck out and encourage a little fun.

Bang away lil’ punks!!