Why I am raising my kids as gamer kids, not sports players
On the surface, we seem like a fairly typical American family, by modern standards: I have a college degree and a full-time job in the insurance industry, and my husband stays at home to take care of our three kids (and will do the same for our fourth, who’s due in early August). We live in funky a 70’s house in the suburbs of Houston and drive a minivan. People who meet us often express surprise when they ask what we do “for fun” and we respond that our one and only true hobby is video gaming.
A quick tour of our house tells the tale right away: the conventional China cabinet is nowhere to be seen, its space occupied instead by a 1960’s-era hand-carved wooden credenza filled top …show more content…
Pikmin has taught them how to manage and allocate resources. Minecraft has taught them how to cooperate to reach a common goal. The Super Mario games have sharpened their reflexes, and their eye-hand coordination skills have been fine-tuned in sublime ways. From nearly all of their games they have learned that no plan is foolproof, and that plans sometimes require reworking when the situation demands. They are not constrained by the limitations of their physical size or physical ability. They have discovered common interests that bridge cultural and social gaps, allowing them to form friendships with peers with whom they would otherwise have little in common. They have learned to understand and appreciate the difference between fantasy and reality. They use their games as a basis for acting out pretend play scenarios with each other. The games do not stifle their imagination; quite the opposite is true. The games give them baseline scenarios upon which they build entire imaginary …show more content…
There are no Halo-related head injuries. We have, on several occasions, taken them to participate in video game tournaments at Game Over Videogames, our favorite local gaming store chain. I will never forget the experience of standing in the back of the store, which was packed wall-to-wall with gamers for a Mario Kart 64 tournament, and watching as our 8- and 9-year-old sons took their turn against a player at least three times their age. By way of background, our boys are experienced with later versions of Mario Kart, but had little experience with the N64 version. I’m not inclined to try to phrase this diplomatically – they sucked. They lost by a wide margin and crashed countless times along the way. When their turn was over, they both got up from the couch and were greeted with nothing but cheers and high-fives from the gamers in the crowd, congratulating them for the effort they put forth and the grace with which they accepted their loss. Absent were the hyper-competitive parents and the toxic winner-take-all mindset for which kids’ sports have become regrettably notorious; among gamers, they found nothing but encouragement and acceptance. I wiped a tear from my eye and knew, at that moment, that our decision was the right one for
On the surface, we seem like a fairly typical American family, by modern standards: I have a college degree and a full-time job in the insurance industry, and my husband stays at home to take care of our three kids (and will do the same for our fourth, who’s due in early August). We live in funky a 70’s house in the suburbs of Houston and drive a minivan. People who meet us often express surprise when they ask what we do “for fun” and we respond that our one and only true hobby is video gaming.
A quick tour of our house tells the tale right away: the conventional China cabinet is nowhere to be seen, its space occupied instead by a 1960’s-era hand-carved wooden credenza filled top …show more content…
Pikmin has taught them how to manage and allocate resources. Minecraft has taught them how to cooperate to reach a common goal. The Super Mario games have sharpened their reflexes, and their eye-hand coordination skills have been fine-tuned in sublime ways. From nearly all of their games they have learned that no plan is foolproof, and that plans sometimes require reworking when the situation demands. They are not constrained by the limitations of their physical size or physical ability. They have discovered common interests that bridge cultural and social gaps, allowing them to form friendships with peers with whom they would otherwise have little in common. They have learned to understand and appreciate the difference between fantasy and reality. They use their games as a basis for acting out pretend play scenarios with each other. The games do not stifle their imagination; quite the opposite is true. The games give them baseline scenarios upon which they build entire imaginary …show more content…
There are no Halo-related head injuries. We have, on several occasions, taken them to participate in video game tournaments at Game Over Videogames, our favorite local gaming store chain. I will never forget the experience of standing in the back of the store, which was packed wall-to-wall with gamers for a Mario Kart 64 tournament, and watching as our 8- and 9-year-old sons took their turn against a player at least three times their age. By way of background, our boys are experienced with later versions of Mario Kart, but had little experience with the N64 version. I’m not inclined to try to phrase this diplomatically – they sucked. They lost by a wide margin and crashed countless times along the way. When their turn was over, they both got up from the couch and were greeted with nothing but cheers and high-fives from the gamers in the crowd, congratulating them for the effort they put forth and the grace with which they accepted their loss. Absent were the hyper-competitive parents and the toxic winner-take-all mindset for which kids’ sports have become regrettably notorious; among gamers, they found nothing but encouragement and acceptance. I wiped a tear from my eye and knew, at that moment, that our decision was the right one for