Parenting by Video Game

This morning as I was doing some housework I entertained myself by listening to my children pretending to be Pokemon trainers. I started thinking about the significant role that video games have played in my children’s lives. I know that many parents are of the “video games are evil” school of thought. Link’s kindergarten teacher certainly was. She told me that video games have no value whatsoever and she repeatedly expressed concern over Link’s “obsession” with video games because he was constantly drawing Mario and Luigi on his school papers.

I don’t agree with Link’s teacher. Video games DO have value and more than just entertainment value. People laughingly make jokes about hand-eye co-ordination in reference to video games. But in truth that hand-eye co-ordination is critical in any number of daily tasks as is the fine motor co-ordination that is necessary to push lots of little buttons in odd combinations. Puzzle games can teach thinking skills and problem solving skills which have applications in all sorts of other endeavors. Video games frequently provide opportunities for parents to teach kids how to handle frustration and competition. Many games teach lessons about resource management, you have to manage your life levels and money and any number of other things. First Person Shooter games can teach how to react and respond to threats. Those are not skills I care for my children to have, so we don’t allow FPS games at our house. Video games actually involve children in thinking and responding, unlike television which induces a hypnotic state. I’m sure I’ve missed other things, but you get the point.

Perhaps all of the above is merely my way of reasoning away the guilt when I encourage video game play in order to get the kids out of my hair (every parent needs some sanity time). But I don’t really think so. I’ve seen the benefit my children get. The biggest benefit has been in their imaginary worlds. For every hour they spend tied to a screen playing a video game, they spend two or three away from the screen playing imaginary games involving Pokemon, or Mario Kart, or Kirby, or any number of other characters and worlds to which they’ve been introduced.

There are definitely times where I feel like they’ve been spending too much time playing video games. Then as a parent I need to step in and encourage other behaviors. I’ve discovered that video games tend to go in cycles. There will be a week or so where it seems like they do nothing else and then there will be a week where the games hardly get turned on at all.

I guess my point is that like almost any other experience which life offers, video games can be an extremely useful parenting tool if managed correctly.