I've never been much of a gamer. As a kid we only owned Mario Brothers and Duck Hunter...and I'm not sure it was worth the money. When I got married and we found out we were going to have a baby, I promised that our children would live as we did. They would build forts, play ball, make up games and not sit in front of some gaming device all day long.
Well, my son is six and we just purchased a Wii. My change of heart was about winter and staying active indoors. It came with a dance game...that's really REALLY fun. So I was feeling pretty confident about our new gaming system.
That's were I screwed up. In my new-found gamer excitement, I purchased a game that has something like 20 different games to play. They range from table tennis to bowling to darts. And now my son begs me to play. From the moment he gets home from school until bath time. And he cries and flails around and screams like a youngster verging on the dreaded three's. When I (and yes, I realize we all become our parents at some point) tried to explain that when I was a kid we made up games and played by ourselves and were rarely entertained by our parents or some game device, he looked at me like I was speaking another language. He refused to play anything else or dig through his toys. And chose to sit and pout until bedtime.
I know this will pass. I know the games will get dull. But I never thought in a million years that at six years old, I would have to take games away or set limits on how much game time my children could have.
If only imagination came with a battery!
Micro-communities.
10 years ago
