Children have all the time of the world, the younger they are the more time they have. This is thrue and it would be nice if that could last forever. But, as we all know, that is not the case. At school children will learn about time and how to tell the time, looking at the clock. Sooner or later a child’s first watch will come. But what to buy for who?
Most watches in these days have an electronic movement running on a battery. They are very accurate compared to the old mechanical movements due to a quartz crystal controlling the electronics. But you have to make a choice between analog or digital reading of the time. The best practice is to have an analog watch with hours, minutes and seconds hands until the child can read it without a flaw. Then you can choose whatever the child likes: analog, digital or even both.
You can give toddlers and preschoolers a watch, but that will be more of a toy of course, since they have no or a limited idea of time. So, don’t pay to much for such a watch. The watch can be analog or digital, it does not matter yet. As long as it look nice for a girl and sturdy for a boy, it is OK. But pay some attention to how the watch is made: children of this age are not very careful with their toys. Take care of small particles that can come off and toddlers can put in their mouth, that can be dangerous.
When the child is learnig time at school, you can best give a watch with hands. There are so called ‘learning watches’ which help the child in telling the time when looking at the watch. The layout of the dial is done in a way it makes it easy to tell the time. Do not buy a very cheap watch but buy a bit of quality: the child needs to get familiar to the watch and that takes some time. A watch that does survive only a few weeks is of no use and a waste of money.
Pay attention if the watch is water resistant to some degree. Splashproof is the absolute minimum. If the resistant depth is 30 meters (about 100 feet), that does not mean you can dive with the watch to a depth of 30 meters/100 feet. This is a static lab test and sudden temperature differences when the weather is hot and the water is cold and smashing into the water are not taken in account. Personaly I would not even do the dishes with it. This is the reason that scuba diver watches at least have a resistance depth of 200 meters/666 feet although the maximum diving depth is about 40 meters (appr. 130 feet).
The higher the resistance depth, the better it is: if water cannot come into the watch, dust and dirt cannot come in either! Water resistance is not for ever: gaskets will wear. You should realy take this in account if the watch has a date that has to be adjusted if a month has less than 31 days. Scuba divers will have their watches tested and maintained at least once a year for this reason.
If the child gets older, you can buy a watch for use a longer time of years. Analog or digital, it does not matter anymore. They know how to read the time on watches and clocks. A girl probably likes fashion, so you can buy a real jewelry but a boy needs something that will survive adventures.
You can opt for a divers watch for a boy. Or why not something special: a nice mechanical (Seiko 5 or Orient) or why not a watch that astronauts are wearing in Spacelab like a Casio G-Shock? For a list of NASA certified watches see this Wiki article (scroll to the bottom) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watch
Category: Kids and Teens
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