Your kids and video games - what do you think?

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Permalink Reply by MariaD on February 8, 2009 at 5:57am

My kid got a computer of her own at four months, after she accidentally deleted a directory banging on her dad's keyboard. One of the best accommodations at the first couple of years was a touchscreen, which allowed her to play more interesting games or use art software and puzzle software around the age of one or so. She moved to using a mouse around the age of three.

As a family, we try to be present in the same social spaces online and check out games and other media when a family member gets into something. Sometimes we regularly participate together - some of math ed blogging, World of Warcraft and DanceDance Revolution are three examples. Other times, one of us spends significantly more time with something and the other two just visit for a while; examples are my daughter's DS games, my husband's techie blogs, or my "social media" networks.

As for rules, we try to promote social connections and authoring in everything the kid does with computers. So I am happier with roleplaying and multiplayer games, compared to other genres, for example. I like sites with a lot of homemade indie games where their creators discuss programming and critique games, too. Or communities of fanfic writers or illustrators.

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Permalink Reply by Nicki on February 9, 2009 at 10:08am

Maria, the touch screen sounds really awesome! Is that something you put on any regular computer? Thanks for both your feedback, it's helpful and interesting. If anyone has any more to add, please keep it coming!
~Nicki :D

MariaD said:

My kid got a computer of her own at four months, after she accidentally deleted a directory banging on her dad's keyboard. One of the best accommodations at the first couple of years was a touchscreen, which allowed her to play more interesting games or use art software and puzzle software around the age of one or so. She moved to using a mouse around the age of three.

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Permalink Reply by MariaD on February 9, 2009 at 11:40am

Nicki, the touchscreen we got goes over your regular monitor and plugs into a USB port. If you want to search, products like that are named "touchscreen overlays" or "add-on touchscreens." Since babies love to point, it worked like a charm :-)

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Permalink Reply by Jody on May 4, 2009 at 2:04pm

My seven year old plays wow and has been playing that an Wii, Playstation, Xbox, Heroes etc.. since he was about 4. He loves them and does very well in school, and it doesn't seem to have affected him adversely. My hubby and I play with him and it is good family fun.

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Permalink Reply by Jodie Sparke on May 5, 2009 at 7:20pm

Well, my 6 year old has a PS2 (hand me down from my hubby). Now my hubby has an xbox 360. While my son sometimes plays the xbox with his dad, he mostly plays the PS2 in his room. He love Australian Rules Football right now, but also loves games like Ben 10 etc.... We also have a Wii, wich I prefer him to use cause it gets him moving. He's pretty good at tennis and bowling. I have fun playing Wii with him :)

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Permalink Reply by Lois Eiler on September 9, 2009 at 12:41pm

Nicki, my DS is 10, and totally addicted to "screen time". It varies between what it is and how much time he spends on it, but it's a big part of his life. He's the only child of two parents who spend lots of time on computers as well, so it's a natural. Lately he's been playing an online game called Blockland, and that "phase" has lasted awhile. We have a playstation and an old gamecube, and he has a DS-- but I started playing with him more because it seemed a way to interact, and the best times are when we find games all three of us can play. I'm a huge Harry Potter fan, and we've been known to pass the controller between us on a one player game because we each had different skill sets -- I was good at finding things, DS good at flying, DH good at dueling. And we would cheer each other on.

We probably haven't been as good as we "should" be about limits, but since we often share TV watching and game time with him, I don't feel so bad about it. He has to do homework and household obligations first, and turns it off an hour before bed for reading time. The main tricky part of playing with him besides finding games we both enjoy is that he gets so good at winning (he likes racing games a lot) that I have to keep my competitive streak in check or I'll get too depressed over getting beaten all the time!

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Permalink Reply by Bailey Anderson on November 4, 2009 at 9:41am

As a mom-to-be, I can only comment on what I think will go over well (and I'm flexible enough to realize that sometimes life just don't happen as we plan...). My husband and I have discussed "screen time" on several occasions, because he is a pretty involved gamer, and while I'm a bit more casual, I have lots of other computer hobbies (website design, graphic art, etc).

It will definitely be an adjustment, but I really want to try and have our child have as little screen time as possible for their first two years. I definitely would prefer any screentime be with games that challenge a child in some way - not just "edutainment" but also things like interactive fantasy/RPGs, strategy games, and sure, the physical games like DDR, Rock Band, etc (have you ever tried to play drums on hard mode for half an hour?? Now THERE is an upper-body workout!).

Even with games that challenge, I still want to have most of our child's entertainment coming from non-technologically driven sources and instead be imaginative and active. While I have no doubt that many children can keep a healthy body without being active all the time, I come from a family of, well, husky people, and I want to make sure that we can give our son or daughter a positive relationship with physical activity (and healthy eating, but that's not the topic of discussion) early on so that they won't ever have to go through the difficult time I've had in trying to go from sloth-like computer potato to ... less-sloth-like and significantly smaller computer not-potato? I'm sure you understand my meaning ;)

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