Gaming with Your Kids is Good Parenting
Children need your help navigating this compelling and treacherous world.
Our dear friend, Arthur, had tuberculosis. He didn’t have long to live. Sitting in the doctor’s room with the warm late afternoon light filtering in, hearing the news was surreal. We shared a lifetime of adventures, of growing and maturing as the world changed around us.
My children are distressed. They had bonded with this courageous man. They had helped him when he had to make tough moral choices. He taught them so much.
We left the doctor’s surgery, logged out, and turned off the Playstation — time to discuss this sad turn of events.
Play is vital. Life skills, such as regulating emotions, understanding fairness, and making moral choices can’t always be explained — understanding is enhanced by experienced. Children learn by making mistakes, suffering losses and getting up when they fall over. Video games are the perfect arena for these tribulations. If I, as a parent, am not participating, I’m letting them drift in a dangerous vacuum.
When my children were younger, we played games such as Professor Fizwizzle and Reader Rabbit. They were a mix of education, strategy and storytelling, Sometimes there was a competitive element. I needed to be careful —…
