femalegamer

My husband and I always joke that we will be introducing our children to gaming early on. By the age of two or three we’ll have taught them to do the daily quests in Warcraft so they can be our little “gold farmers.” Fortunately it’s just our little joke and it will be much longer than that before we allow them to get sucked into any game of that magnitude.

The question is raised though, in a gamer family, when do you introduce your children to gaming? It is obviously happening earlier and earlier thanks to the advent of youth game platforms like Leapfrog and the sort. And yes, it can be a fun way to get children to learn things thanks to the educational nature of many of the games, but I fully believe that relying upon those methods can be damaging.

Attention spans are becoming shorter and shorter, thanks to the plethora of options and the total media sensory overload of this generation. Gone are the days of children spending day upon day playing outdoors, reading books and playing good old pretend.

It needs to be a fine line. Yes, the games can be useful, but they shouldn’t be the sole method by which children grow up.

I look back at the many hours I spent in the car as a little one, reading a book or staring out the window daydreaming. Nowadays, built-in DVD players keep children occupied. It saddens me that parents have to rely upon a television screen to get through a two-hour trip.

And yes, this is coming from someone who could find no better way than to spend an entire weekend playing a game, interspersed only with eating and sleeping.

I don’t think I would hesitate starting our children off young, as long as it is educational and is not the sole source of their entertainment/education. But, I will try my hardest to combine it with a healthy dose of old fashioned fun.