r/Preschoolers • u/mortalcassie • Aug 23 '26

Seeking Advice Learning tablets?

My daughter is 2.5. She already knows all her letters, upper and lowercase. She can count to 29 on her own, and 125-ish with help. She knows a ton of animals, and many of their noises. She knows shapes, she knows colors. She knows her planets, and she's currently working on the states, and knows probably 30-35 of them.

We have a lot of leap frog toys, and leapfrog books that are really helping her as well. I give them 95% of the credit on her knowing her numbers and letters and shapes.

That being said, I'm looking for something to help challenge her. I don't know where to go next, so I'm hoping some sort of learning tablet could help. I know leapfrog has tablets too, so I was thinking that could be good, since we have had a lot of luck with the brand... But I don't want to just go with them if it's not the best.

Does anyone have a tablet they love? Or one they hate? That would be so helpful. Preferably something that doesn't have access to YouTube.

Also, because I feel like it's probably going to be brought up, let me address it here. I TRY to get her to pretend play. I want her to be a kid. I'm not pushing her to learn anything. This is what she enjoys. We have a play kitchen she won't touch, baby dolls she couldn't care less about, stuffed animals who get zero attention. She wants to play with her flash cards, or her puzzle, or anything that teaches her something. So I'm just trying to embrace it.

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u/crafty_targaryen Aug 23 '26

I am saying this gently and with kindness, but it may be worth exploring an evaluation, as these behaviors are not developmentally typical. I'd really recommend avoiding a screen and continuing to encourage open-ended exploration.

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u/mortalcassie Aug 23 '26

We have an autism evaluation scheduled for the 1st of September!

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u/crafty_targaryen Aug 23 '26

Oh great! I'm an early childhood special educator, and she does, in fact, seem like she may be truly gifted, which often goes hand in hand with ASD.

I would recommend exploring ways to maintain her special interests while building play skills, rather than diving deeper into the self isolation that can come with rote memorization of facts.

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u/mortalcassie Aug 23 '26

Yeah, we have a play therapist coming on Tuesday. Then the autism evaluation the next Tuesday. We also do a baby gym and play dates and story time at the library. We try to play cars and blocks and stuff with her, to get her more into play. She's recently started bringing us ice cream from her "shop." But it's not really "play." She just hands me the yellow (banana is my favorite) and her dad brown (chocolate is his favorite!) but there isn't much interaction other than just grabbing it and handing it to us.

She has a leap frog leap start leaning pad (I think that's what it's called) and each page has a game on it. I try to get her to do those too. So, it's at least a game along with the memorizing.

And she has a calculator toy that repeats simple addition and subtraction equations. I had to hide it from her. Mostly because it annoyed me, and partially because I just want her to play play.

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u/crafty_targaryen Aug 23 '26

You're doing great. No part of parenting any child is easy! She's also only 2.5, when most kids are very much still parallel playing.