I stood at the window with my almost one year old waving goodbye to Daddy driving off. The stereotypical image jumped out at me, we’ve succumbed to norms that I’ve never been entirely comfortable with. I turned around and looked at the big flatscreen, two consoles and twin controllers lying on the carpet and wondered whether that fits into the norm as well. A few years ago, gaming was not a cool hobby for anyone to have and toddlers weren’t suppose to have any contact with 2D environments. Now companies like Fisher-Pricer have infant and toddler free to play computer games on their site; times are changing.
I’m particular about what I play and I’m Draconian about what my daughter plays and how much. We do all the average kid stuff and then we add three times more reading and book time and then we add some games and toddler apps. She’s grown up with a controller in her hands and there’s an old white xbox controller in her toy chest. I let her explore some of my games by parking the character in a pretty safe spot and then letting her run him/her around in exploration. She loves catching coins on the iPad in games that drop them and can page through electronic iPad books as easily as her real books.
Kids and tech are an interesting subject, kids and electronic games are a controversial one. We’re a techie and gaming family and although I use common sense when it comes to which parts of the industry she gets to explore, I’m more lenient than most and actively encourage the use of gadgets, from controllers to touch screens to keyboards. I’m proud of her for being able to use an analog stick to steer a character, for being able to drag Humpty Dumpty back onto the wall and as long as Mom points the mouse, being able to click to pick up a Skype call, just as proud as I am that she eats with her own spoon, rolls a ball and can get out of her push chair and walk around in shops.
I have a daughter that, when Dad says “Batman” she says “Shhhhhh” with a finger on her lips (and then follows that up with dawdle dawdle dawdle whilst playing with her lip, but that’s beside the point) and today she walked into the lounge, looked at Batman on pause on the screen, pointed and said “Batman!” Her toys have names ranging from Gina (named after Gina Tripani) to Cthulu and we listen to podcasts over breakfast and watch twit.tv Is there a place for grown up stuff in a kids’ world? If the grownup stuff is the above and Mythbusters, I say yes, most definitely. I’d rather have my daughter walk into a room with twit.tv on than BBC News.
The world is what you make it and there is nothing more magical than stories. We read, avidly, but we also game avidly and I can’t wait for her to be grown up enough to play Once upon a Monster with me. It’s a very different world from the one I grew up in and that’s not a bad thing, in fact, it’s a very good thing. Gaming fits into our lives and I truly hope that as she gets older and more and more of the gaming world opens up for her, she’ll be as mesmerised by it as I am.
There’s nothing as awesome as a good story and as much as I love reading, there’s something magical about interactive stories inside games. It’s a whole different level of imaginative and immersive play, the stories in books are introspective, taking you on a journey inside yourself where your imagination makes words come to life; the stories in games are interactive and you’re given a visual-auditory world to step into and explore. Both are important, but each has its own special feel to it. As a parent, in this instance, I most definitely do not believe in either or. Variety is a good thing, both in the activities we provide our kids with and within the games we allow them to enjoy.
Gaming isn’t just about fun, it’s about learning that there are options, possibilities and alternatives out there and that the world is a big place, bigger than the planet or our universe, it’s as infinite as the amount of stories we can tell. I hope she grows up to be a gamer; stories are a constant that never abandon us and the characters we love inside them, are friends for life.
The general advice about TV and children are that television isn’t doing any damage, but under the age of 2 in particular, it doesn’t do any good. I’m reading a lot about kids and the term “screen-time” has replaced the word television on most cases. However, it doesn’t seem to have changed the definition all that much. Watching something on a screen and playing something utilizing a screen are still clumped together and viewed as passive activities. This annoys me.
