Birding with Baby and Toddler- Toy Binoculars

Your kid will want your toys. Get used to it.

Those toy binoculars made for kids are only temporary decoys. Our kid knows we don’t use them and wants what we have.

At around age one, I let her hold my binoculars as I wore her around. She licked the sides and the lenses. She pulled off the focus knob. At about one and a half, she stopped sticking them in her mouth but still pulled the focus knob off (and still occasionally does at two and a half). I try to make sure that if she holds them, the strap goes around her neck. I let her use my camera (it’s a point-and-shoot) and try to get her to keep the strap around her neck. We have not had any drops, but I consider myself lucky in that regard. Perhaps the biggest issue is she likes to touch the lenses and does not yet understand their sensitive nature. Cleaning lenses can be a hazardous affair (for the lenses), so make sure you have the right tools like a lens brush and use caution.

However, she has since confiscated my lens brush and used it to clean the rocks we were sitting on.

I fully expect to have to replace the camera and binoculars someday. However, I do not want her to form negative impressions of the main birding tools if I don’t let her use them or if I stress her out about their handling. I also want her to learn to use these tools. If they break, they will be expensive to replace, but a) I will get new, possibly upgraded gear and b) she can’t learn how to use binoculars or a camera if she doesn’t get to use them. It’s a cost of learning.

I have watched her move from treating binoculars as a chew toy to put the binoculars to her eyes. If she can't focus the binoculars yet, she at least understands where to place them and that they are for looking through. I have watched her shift from pushing every button on the camera repeatedly to actually pointing the camera at her object of interest and snapping a fuzzy photo of a goose. Proud parent of a birder-in-training!