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Most Parents Don't Game With Their Kids
A recent study, reported on by MSNBC, has found that a sizeable percentage of parents don't play games with their kids. Of those that do, many only play for a small portion of the time their kids are gaming, or have no real understanding of what their kids are playing. "Besides those who simply don't play the games with their children, another 30 percent say they spend less than an hour a week doing so. All told, about three in four parents of young gamers never or hardly ever touch the stuff. 'I don't think it's good for them, the violence, the obsession,' said Karen Kimball, 55, of Hale, Minn., another nonplayer who estimates her 17-year-old son plays 25 hours weekly. 'No longer is it, Let's go out and throw a football.'" I wonder how many parents object to their kids watching 20-25 hours a week of television. Is this a sign of current popular attitudes towards games, or honest parental concern over the 'dangers' of gaming?
I actually grew up gaming with my dad. He, naturally, was the owner of the PC and he and I played various DOS games together starting when I was about 6 or 7. When the SNES came out we played a lot of Super Mario Kart together and on the N64 we played Goldeneye and Perfect Dark non-stop. It was a blast. There's no reason playing with your parents can't be fun. Of course... I had to take it easy on him, otherwise he'd get mad and stop playing. :)
You are using English. Please learn the difference between loose and lose; they're, there, and their; your and you're.
Those kinds of comments from the mother talking about obsession etc are born of ignorance. For my generation, the past ones and the coming ones gaming is just going to be part of life (barring some kind of theocrat take over....*gets plane tickets ready*). I would want to see what games my kids were playing, yes, but more out of an honest curiosity and yes...a want to play the games with them (multiplayer is more fun!)
One of the first things my dad did for me was help me get our 486 to play the games I liked. This involved going into config.sys and autoexec.bat and REMing out a bunch of entries. That not only taught me critical thinking skills (as at a point he just said "ok, you have to figure it out from here") and made those hours upon hours I spent with my dad doing that very fun and rewarding.
Current parents...give the games a chance, try them, you might find out you actually *shock* like them too. What's the worst that could happen? You could only be as screwed up as your children are, and lets be honest, most kids are allright.
Happiness does not come from having much, but from being attached to little.
Our WoW guild is very similar, with many parents with both adult and small children. My own children are members and sometimes my wife or I slide over and let them take their turn at the keyboard with the other parent logged on with them. It's not really different from playing 2-player Super Mario Bros. with my dad as an adolescent, and most days my kids and I would rather toss a ball or play an old fashioned card or board game together. PC gaming is more of a novelty for my kids, probably comes from not living the "American Dream" of owning 8 PC's for my kids to get in trouble on where I can't see them, who knows *shrug*. Point is, any affirmative involvement with your kids is a good thing.
`Anyone else out there gaming with their four year old? Wii Play has finally found its perfect audience! My son will play it for hours if I let him (he's beaten me quite a few times on that cow riding game).
At times, I'll also let him run my orc shaman (usually in Ghost Wolf form) around Thunder Bluff in WoW. He loves to make him swim through the pond on the lower rise. He learned to spell his first word - "dance" - by making my orc dance. So if you're logged onto Trollbane and you see an orc dancing in the middle of Thunder Bluff, it's probably him. Feel free to say hi - I'm standing right next to him at all times.
"Can't you see that everyone is buying station wagons?"
These days, I often find myself watching or helping my kids play and less time playing myself.
Last night I had both kids playing Garry's Mod (a HL2 mod) against each other. Emma, who's four and a half, was having a great time spawning in odd things and making rebel companions. I did have to step in and mediate Emma wailed "Sam's murdering my buddies." Ah, parenting.
They also both spent a lot of time playing the experimental game Darwin Hill. Emma requested it, "The one where there's the bugs and you get to squish them!".
My son and I have a shared WoW account, and I try to play most of the games that I buy him for our game consoles and computers.
... "Dad! Can you make sure I don't die while I go to the bathroom?" "Sure, np".
But outdoors? Um, dude, he has friends for that. We live in a city, not the country.
When I grew up in the boonies on a tree farm I played games with adults and older kids a lot more - because there were fewer kids my age in easy distance to play with - in a city, as our society has moved from a farm-based agrarian culture (1900) to a city-based culture (2000) it is very easy for kids to find nearby kids who are the same age to play with - who don't live (true fact) 25 miles away (most of my girlfriends since I was 10 lived about that far away).
Plus, in some online games, we even coexist on the same server and sometimes run each others characters
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
30 minutes a day is plenty of computer time right now. They get more on Saturdays. As they get older, computer time will increase, but it will have to be productive computer time. Programming, typing, i.e. learning...
Life's 90% work and 10% play. The kids that learn that early on have a better chance at being successful and self-controlled.
I can't speak for what happens when my daughter is at her mom's house, but when she's with me she I don't let her play video games at all unless I'm playing with her. She's eight right now, and I don't plan to let her game alone for at least a few years. For all I know she won't even be interested in video games by then, but if she is I'm sure I'll still play with her at least part of the time. I want her to view video games as a healthy social activity, not something you do in the basement with the blinds drawn like so many nerds.
It started with Pokemon on an old Gameboy. I wanted him to start reading more and thought one of the ways would be to simply get him interested in playing a game that he could relate to because he was watching Pokemon on TV all the time. That's all it took. Soon, he was kicking my ass in Quake2 and Quake3, owning me in Unreal Tournament, and by the time he was 11 he was playing tournament grade Counterstrike. Then came WoW, Halo, Halo2, Halo3, etc. We play a lot of the same games together and his skill and understanding of game dynamics is far beyond mine. Now if I could only get him interested in hot rodding...
-Phil
To avoid corruption, one must remain dishonest.