There are a lot of views on video games and children. Some parents don't want to let their kids play anything, others worry that any time on playing games is a "waste". Others let their kids play anything and don't worry about it too much.
I think there are a lot of games that have real educational value. They can help improve children's reading ability, their skills with math, logic and spatial reasoning. They can even help kids learn to be kind to others.
I have played video games with my kid since she was 3 years old, and I have some guidelines that have worked well for me.
This is probably the hardest of all so I put it up front. Parents are busy, I get it. But the idea I want to convey is to think of video games as a shared activity. Some quality time together, especially at first. By sitting with your kid you can play with them, help them learn, understand and engage with the world you're introducing them to.
If you're not into video games you can learn how to play along with them!
Video games are an extremely intense media. They are full of moving images, sounds and require player interaction from the controller. As adults you may be used to play sessions ranging from 30 minutes to many hours. However with small children I would really recommend play sessions of 10-12 minutes.
More than that and your kid is going to be exhausted and grumpy when they're finished. Shorter than that is fine but a lot of games have natural stopping points at around that time.
I set up a cooking timer that will beep after 12 minutes. Before starting, I make it clear that we're only going to play for 12 minutes. When the timer beeps, it's not "me" that is stopping play, it's the timer so my kid seems to argue less.
When the timer beeps, it's time to wrap things up. Almost all games these days have frequent auto-save features, so you can technically just put the console to sleep or quit the game immediately.
However you want them to feel in control, and for them to "buy in" to stopping the game. So I usually say something like
"OK it's time to wrap things up, can you find a place where we can put the game to sleep? How about we stop your character next to that box?"
Then, one of the first things I taught my kid was how to put the console to sleep. For example holding down on the Home button and pressing A is all they need to do to put a Switch to sleep.
Just like with other activities, putting it away is part of the activity itself. So the final step is to put the controller away in its spot.
If you're not used to games, I would check out my Reviews for an idea of what games are good to play.
August 21, 2023