Developmental Value in Gaming?

Sagrilarus wrote: The commissioner has created an imaginary need, and a very real response in the form of travel teams, away tournaments, matching gym bags, hotel stays, winter speed training . . . when all your eight-year-old kid wants to do is run around on the ball field and have some fun. I ended up pulling my kids from the local programs and carting them to i9 sports which gives them matching t-shirts and two hour sessions on Saturdays at the same field each week.

This is another topic we should have a thread on. Youth Athletics. Oy vey! I'm almost to the point where I want to say 'no more' and it has nothing to do with the children.

EDIT: maybe we should have a separate folder for kid/family discussions so that we aren't spamming a gamine/hobby site with this type of off topic material. Or, I guess we could use the 'kid/family games' folder?

This is something that has been on my mind a lot now that I'm doing the stay-at-home dad thing. I have had moments when I've felt guilty for not providing more structure to my boys. They basically each get to pick a half-hour TV show in the morning, and then the only really set pattern for the day is lunch and rest/nap time. Past that they are basically doing their own thing, playing outside or in their room, coloring, stuff like that. Sometimes this is with me, sometimes it isn't. They're at the age now when they're just starting to fight, and part of my struggle is to gauge how things are escalating and see if they can work it out without coming to blows or me intervening.

I actually think that's a pretty good environment, but it's very easy to feel guilty that I'm not doing all I can to nurture them. I think parents are trained to assume that this kind of parenting is fundamentally lazy, like I don't actually care what my kids are getting into. After some reflection I've learned that this simply isn't true. Giving them space to breathe and do what they want is good, with some major routine things built into the day.

As for screen time, that's a struggle for me. My four-year-old has only a passing interest in video games, but it can be tempting to plop them in front of a TV just to get them out of my hair sometimes. I'm trying to scale back the screen time, but it's a lot harder to do so when I'm home all day with them.

Matt brings up a lot of different points in that post (nice work buddy) and they require some thought.

I'll chime in on a couple of them. Since my son is only three much of it doesn't apply to me yet but I like going through the thought process... it helps me figure out what kind of parent I want to be.

As for free direction. Sure, I'll let Sunderland choose what he wants to some degree. I'll also, I think anyway, push him a little sometimes. The joy you get from some things (like video games) is pretty immediate in comparison to the joy you get from being a good mandolin player. Learning an instrument can be incredibly rewarding but it takes some time. Playing video games can be rewarding as well, but that is felt pretty much immediately in comparison. So I want to find ways to impart to him that he needs to spend time with some things in order to find even greater joy. That is something we will learn together as a team while he ages, it's something I wish I had a little more of as a kid. I need to know how to approach him and what his personality requires from me for this to work.

When I was young I remember (this seems off topic but it's not) bringing my Dad Uplift Mofo Party Plan from the Red Hot Chile Peppers and playing him some songs on it. They were an underground band at the time and I was the only guy at my school who had anything from them. So to me they seemed cool, I liked the sound well enough but a big part of the appeal (early teens) was that I was finding things that others didn't know about. When I played it for my Dad he listened closely and then took his time explaining to me why it was shit.

This did not ruin my enjoyment of music as Matt asserts it could (re: comics vs. Shakespeare) it increased it. I had to do better!! I learned that day that Anthony Kedis writes really juvenile sexist lyrics. It didn't hit me right away, I was offended and hurt at first and continued listening to them for a couple of years. But it stuck with me and as the years went on I learned a lot from that day (and a few others like it). Sometimes hard truths can help you to become better... this is why I think it's dangerous to make too many blanket statement about children. We all want advice.. but ultimately your child has a personality, they are individuals and you must learn what kind of individual. The more I respect that fact that he's his own person and make efforts to get to know that person the better the chance I have of connecting with him in a real way. Maybe my son won't respond to the techniques my old man used, I might have to find ways to keep it fresh.

So that's two points.... some direction and some freedom, and sometimes hard truths can be brought up with a good explanation and that isn't necessarily bad. Kids are not all the same.

Now the Tiger Woods thing I really like and I'm going to say some ignorant shit about that.

Sometimes a parent sacrifices their own child for the greater good. Golf probably doesn't count but I think you will understand me soon.

I once read a quote from Nikolas Kazantkas (he made St. Francis of Assisi say it) that went something like: "I pity the town where there are no saints and I pity the town where everyone is a saint" and it resonated with me for years. I see how there could be value in it.

So Tiger's old man pushed him, his son suffers, we all get the joy of watching one of the greatest of all time do something amazing (this example works better if it isn't golf but you hoe the roe you've been given I guess). This is a minus for one man and a small plus for millions. There's a trade off there. I would never raise my kid that way. Walter Gretzky is the example we'd use in Canada if it stuck with sports. I think it's borderline sociopathic to raise a child like that unless they are naturally attracted to the goal themselves. So I am not presenting this argument to show that I support what Tiger's dad did, just to show that I see how some people may support it. To me the cost is too high and we can have a better society if we don't raise kids like that. I would guess that Tiger's dad sees his son's accomplishments as his own.

This is a huge problem. Parents projecting onto their kids, trying to accomplish more in life by getting their kids to do what they never could. That is shit. So while I don't think it's good parenting to push you're kid too hard I think it can occasionally have a societal benefit. That's kind of twisted I realize but I think it bears mentioning.

To get a sense of what all this rigid structure does to people, I strongly recommend (for a lot of reasons) watching the series that Grantland is doing with Landon Donovan, The Finish Line. It touches on a lot of these issues, I think, *way* down the road in life.

grantland.com/tags/the-finish-line-landon-donovan/

It wasn't my intention to go off-subject. The thrust of my post (at least attempted) was to indicate the lack of structureless time in kids' lives. Parents generally refer to a lack of structure as a failure these days. I don't think that's the case.

I think games like Heroscape nurture kids because they have building aspects, role-play aspects, and gaming aspects with a relatively malleable rule set. Kids can use the game in an unstructured way. In my opinion that is where games bring developmental value to kids, and I think video games are harder pressed to provide that kind of toolset. Some do, but I think they're in the minority. I think most are highly structured, even fully defined with little or no random factors to provide an opportunity for creative solutions.

S.

I wrote a super long piece on this, and then realized it divulged a lot of personal stuff. Here's the cliffs notes version.

Games can be a good learning tool, or get people interested in things. I obsessively played Number Munchers, which was super obvious about it, but I'm very good at math now; correlation isn't causality, but I wonder sometimes. I played a ton of Civ I when I was 7. It spring boarded me into having a fascination in world geography, languages, and different alphabets. When I played Hot Shots Golf and my dad watched how good I was at it, he signed me up for golf lessons. I didn't stick with it, but that probably has more to do with the other kids saying that my 35 year old clubs looked like they came out of Happy Gilmore. I lost 10 pounds in one month of playing DDR, and I wasn't really overweight to begin with.

I think games can be good, but like anything else they should be taken in moderation. Don't just give your kid a free pass because he keeps his grades up or doesn't get in trouble. Strive to make them better and more well rounded people. Regular exercise and maintaining long term goals is important. An appreciation of music I think is something that is especially important. Together with the exercise part, I think that not feeling awkward on a dance floor is a good place to be mentally and emotionally.