Gaming addictions & others

[Irulan]

Moderation in everything I suppose.

Going slightly off topic, it always amuses me when parents will not let their children play with toy guns! So they end up using pieces of Lego or sticks, with the same result.

Clock............or maybe old Crock

My eldest brother was able to get CO status for the Vietnam war as he never, ever was allowed to handle toys guns. ( the stick and lego thing aside, I suppose as it's true)

[OakLeaf]

Going slightly off topic, it always amuses me when parents will not let their children play with toy guns! So they end up using pieces of Lego or sticks, with the same result.

Depends on how you define "the same result." Probably in the UK you're talking about whether kids grow up aggressive or pacifist.

In the US, what happens is that kids play with "guns" without learning appropriate firearm handling skills. So when they get their hands on a real gun, they're still handling it as though it were a toy. They don't know your most basic things like being aware of their line of fire or keeping their finger out of the trigger guard or being sure it's unloaded. And they wind up shooting someone else or themselves, unintentionally.

Not that I have children, but no way would I let a child of mine play with a toy gun. I would teach h/h to shoot a real one, though.

[vinbek]

I have a 10 year old son and a 13 year old daughter. We try to instill values, respect, integrity, honesty in everything we do. Won't know if its taking until they get older, but many of their friends don't have solid boundaries for what is right and wrong or appropriate. When they were younger and had friends over - I would sit them down with the other parent present and explain the rules at my house - and that they might be different elsewhere, but these are the rules they are following while at my house. I have to do this at school too. I am an elementary school librarian and I try very hard to encourage the kids to read - especially the boys who lose interest in reading. It seems more time is spent with behavioral issues than actual learning issues these days. The students don't want to take responsibility for their actions and the parents don't either. But I am a different generation than most parents with kids my age - I had my first one at 41......Bekki

[wildhawk]

I feel that technology is a vital part of a child’s learning experience in this day and time, but that a balance has to be struck between video and hands on learning and physical activity. I am dismayed that so few parents spend enough time doing physical activities with their children and that kids are spending entirely too much time in cyber activities via the internet. The rise in obesity in children in America is one example of the growing lack of physical activity. I would much rather see families playing outdoor sports together, camping, hiking, biking, etc. I remember when tv took over in my childhood and blame a large part of my problems with obesity on that. We spent hours in front of our old black and white tv - what an addiction! And we did not have game systems and computers then. My DH and I still use rabbit ears for tv reception and eventhough we own an xbox game system we rarely play for very long. As I get older, I value my free time and want to enjoy my many hobbies and time with my DH. I am also concerned about the meteoric rise of text messaging and young people. I am seriously worried about kids losing their speaking, spelling and writing skills. I remember Pastor Billy Graham being asked one time in an interview that if he could change one thing about his life what would that be and he replied, “I would have spent less time watching television!”

[RoadRaven]

In the US, what happens is that kids play with "guns" without learning appropriate firearm handling skills.

YES, this is the key.
We are a hunting family. All (5) of my children grew up with rifles. But all of them knew basic safety before they were 4yrs old (never point at people or houses or cars... always rely on a bolt being open but don't rely on a safety catch... etc)

Even their toy guns were only used to go hunting deer or bears (my daughter placed a ban on hunting for tigers as they are endangered!), or to "play" at target shooting. They knew no war or shoot'em-up games were ok - though that did of course happen sometimes.

This safety awareness was obvious... to the point of two of my children (aged nearly 4 and nearly 5) telling my brother-in-law off because he came into the house with the bolt still in his rifle - bolts have to come out if you are in the house with a rifle. They noticed before he had made it 5 steps inside the door. Even him showing them the magazine and breech were empty wasn't good enough and he had to remove the bolt!!!

Aged now between 20 and 13, my children have good firearms safety awareness, and to date we have had no injuries or hooliganish behaviour.

[snapdragen]

And well, it shouldn't be odd in the 21st century, but twice in last few weeks, I saw a parent wheeling their child around (big enough to walk, around 4-6 yrs. old) outside. Child had a minature like laptop tucked in front while inside the stroller and manoeuvring the buttons. Probably it was a game? Ok, I'm not a parent but it is strange to see this with the child's fascination but totally disinterested in his/her outside immediate surroundings. Maybe it's the new way of keeping a kid from howling in public..

Any chance this child was disabled in some way? We have a couple of different schools near my office for the disabled, lots of different wheelchairs/strollers etc.

[Irulan]

Any chance this child was disabled in some way? We have a couple of different schools near my office for the disabled, lots of different wheelchairs/strollers etc.

Nope. At least I doubt it. I was out for a ride this fall, and some folks were wheeling what must have been a healthy looking but bored looking 7 year old(ish) kid watching a DVD.

That being said, it's not all bad. I have a geek child, plays LOTs of video games but does a few other things. He is graduating this May with an Electrical Engineering degree, near the top of his class, with a very good job lined up. I'm sure his interest in games/electronics have something to do with his success.

[shootingstar]

Any chance this child was disabled in some way? We have a couple of different schools near my office for the disabled, lots of different wheelchairs/strollers etc.

It was not readily apparent to me as a pedestrian passing by the parent and kid in stroller. I know what you're asking since I did work at rehabilitation hospital for spinal cord injured adults for a few years ages ago. Beside our facility, was a pediatric rehabilitation hospital for children with various disabilties, cerebral palsy, MS, cystic fibrosis, etc. in addition to spinal cord diseases.

It appeared to me at glance, the child was at least normal in hand function and hand-eye neurolocomotor skills, because child's fingers were moving ...FAST.

I do have a pedestrian interest in this ....as a librarian. I am not a children's nor school librarian but have noticed in the professional literature for librarians, in past 2 years, a niche interest of some public librarians interested in gaming as learning strategy..for information literacy skills and secondly, as another resource to draw in more children and teenagers into the library. The reality is use statistics particularily among teenagers for using their public library, are dropping if the library director doesn't reinvent some of their services/diversify their range of resources. And use statistics affects how the library will be funded in the future.

I am not convinced when people talk about the real learning benefits of video games if those benefits can be applied to alot of video games. It would seem a video gaming software company should hire some staff who have specialized knowledge of adult and child cognitive development and learning.

By the way, the person I spoke with she has: her undergraduate university degree in Chemical Engineering. Then her visual arts degree from a public, well-known art and design college. Her first love is the latter which includes computer animation design. So she is someone equipped with strong analytical skills to write programming, etc. and visual design...but learning skills and cognitive development is probably she is picking up as she goes along if she is paying attention to this.

The companies don't care, as long as these games are truly fun...they are to make money.

There's nothing inherently wrong with some video game playing. Even if there is the occasional mildly violent video game, But for a child, it would seem for the child's long-term benefit, that they have passions/interests aside from video games and computers.

[Veronica]

I'm currently addicted to Fallout 3 - a video game.

A couple days ago I was addicted to Simple Genius.

I'm always addicted to good chocolate and pie.


Veronica

[OakLeaf]

I'm old school. I haven't been able to graduate from NetHack and Bejeweled.

[Tuckervill]

By Malcolm Gladwell, who wrote Blink and Outliers, a review of the book, Everything Bad is Good for You
http://www.newyorker.com/archive/200...0516crbo_books

Addresses the video game issue.

Karen

[LBTC]

With a long spell of time off I have learned (again) that it's a good darned thing we haven't invested in any of the gaming systems!! Skype (the VOIP system) has a game called Jeweller's Adventure (probably a knock off of Oakleaf's Bejewelled). I can't believe how much time I have wasted playing this game!!! Yes, I'd be an addict if I had the games in the house. Much like I'd be 40 pounds heavier if we bought chips all the time.

Hugs & butterflies,
~T~

[Tri Girl]

Our Kindergarten teachers are having a huge issue with their classes this year. One teacher actually had a parent say something like, "I send my kid to school. That's where they are suppose to learn. It's your job to teach them, not mine."

Maybe this is just happening in my little corner of the world. But it does scare me to think about what our future is going to be like.

Veronica

I've had that said to me before. I almost came unglued...

And we've talked about it, but it's not just your little corner of the world. Kids are definitely much bolder than they used to be. I had a cookie on my desk one day (given to me by a child who had a birthday) and I had a student reach for it while demanding that they wanted it. I almost had to slap his little hand away (but my look was all it took). They're not comfortable, they're bold and brazen and do and say things to me that I NEVER would've had the nerve/balls to do when I was a kid. The lines of respect between adults and children have blurred to the point where children feel entitled to interact with me as if we're peers. I don't think so little ones...


And I guess I'm addicted to my laptop now. It's new, so I'm sure it'll wear off, but I spend at least a couple hours a day reading all kinds of things online. At least I'm learing, right? Right?

[salsabike]

By Malcolm Gladwell, who wrote Blink and Outliers, a review of the book, Everything Bad is Good for You
http://www.newyorker.com/archive/200...0516crbo_books

Addresses the video game issue.

Karen

Here's the part I found really interesting from this review:

"It doesn’t seem right, of course, that watching “24” or playing a video game could be as important cognitively as reading a book. Isn’t the extraordinary success of the “Harry Potter” novels better news for the culture than the equivalent success of “Grand Theft Auto III”? Johnson’s response is to imagine what cultural critics might have said had video games been invented hundreds of years ago, and only recently had something called the book been marketed aggressively to children:

Reading books chronically understimulates the senses. Unlike the longstanding tradition of gameplaying—which engages the child in a vivid, three-dimensional world filled with moving images and musical sound-scapes, navigated and controlled with complex muscular movements—books are simply a barren string of words on the page. . . .
Books are also tragically isolating. While games have for many years engaged the young in complex social relationships with their peers, building and exploring worlds together, books force the child to sequester him or herself in a quiet space, shut off from interaction with other children. . . .
But perhaps the most dangerous property of these books is the fact that they follow a fixed linear path. You can’t control their narratives in any fashion—you simply sit back and have the story dictated to you. . . . This risks instilling a general passivity in our children, making them feel as though they’re powerless to change their circumstances. Reading is not an active, participatory process; it’s a submissive one."

[lph]

Yep, that is a really good point. Books have an undeserved good reputation compared to video games and tv, and this comes from an avid reader who rarely plays video games.