Video Games and This Family

There comes a time in a marriage when you start talking about children. Now, don’t get your hopes up. I’m not pregnant. However, The Gamer and I have talked more and more about kids as the year has progressed. We realize that our kids will know a good amount about video games whether it be intentional or not. If they end up liking video games, that’s great! If they’d rather do things that we don’t know anything about then that’s great too! We do not want our kids to feel like they have to love video games or that we don’t love them because they don’t love video games.

On the note of video games, there are a lot of negative stereotypes. We’ve talked about some of them before. I have thought a lot about what we should do when it comes to video games and kids. I don’t want to have kids who are entirely dependent upon media as their entertainment, and I don’t want media to be my babysitter. I feel strongly that I shouldn’t do that. So here are a couple of concepts I have about our future children and video games.

I’m not a huge fan of the phrase “guilty pleasure”. You shouldn’t feel guilty about what you love. Video games are no exception. That’s a concept that I would like The Gamer and me to teach to our future children. If they enjoy things that aren’t “popular” then they shouldn’t feel like they are outsiders or that they are somehow less of a person than those who don’t enjoy what they do.

Something that I want my kids to know is that I support them in their hobbies. If they play a game, I want to sit down and watch them play. Will I have a hard time not back seat gaming? Probably. But I just want to make sure they know that I’m interested in what they enjoy doing.

I’ve noticed that it’s difficult to time how long I’m going to be while playing a video game. Some levels of a game take a longer time than others. Like many parents, I don’t want my kids in front of a screen all day. So instead of establishing how long they play a video game based on time, I want to limit the play time by other actions. This means possible research for games we let our children have. If the game is based on worlds and levels, then establish how many levels and worlds they can do. If a game is based is more of a free-exploration type of game, then it might be easier to establish a time limit. I guess I won’t know until I try it out.

I can definitely see this being a family thing and I want to make sure that we all know that it can be a time where we can come together as a family. I’m not saying it would go off without a hitch, but I also want our future kids to know that we love them and want to spend time with them.

For those who have kids, what do you do if they love to play video games? What are some rules that you have established? Let us know.

We’ll see you next week!