Kids Love Video Games
photo courtesy of ilovemypit
The three year old loves video games, and I'm proud of it. I've often been told by popular media that video games are the root of all evil, and that they turn your kids into a pile of gelatinous goo, but I disagree. Video games have a great number of redeeming qualities, even for someone as young as three years old. Kids are able to develop more finely tuned motor skills, hone problem solving and observational skills, plus develop a sense of accomplishment.
Motor Skills
When I purchased a shiny new DS Lite a little over a year ago, my wife inherited the trusty old DS Fat. Shortly after this, my daughter became obsessed with PictoChat. For those of you who don't play Nintendo DS, this is a chat program that also allows the user to send drawings, hence the name PictoChat. As a result of the three year old spending time 'playing' with PictoChat, her fine motor skills have improved. On the DS, she is able to practice writing letters, drawing pictures, and navigating the various menus (which alone requires a fair amount of dexterity).
The three year old also enjoys Wii Tennis. She is to the point where she can choose her Mii and start the game, all while navigating via the wiimote. It takes a pretty steady hand, and a bit of patience to accomplish such a task. The Wii has helped push both her patience and control in the right direction.
My daughter has a kiddie laptop that teaches the alphabet, and has a few simple games. One of those games is a maze type game where you are a mouse, and have to locate the cheese in the center of the maze. The game starts out with a very easy maze, and with each completion comes a harder maze. In the beginning, she was unable to complete even the most simple maze without some assistance. However now, she is able to navigate even the hardest of puzzles with ease, knows left from right (when she actually takes her time and thinks about it), and is very proud of herself for learning how to complete the maze.
AccomplishmentNothing makes a geek dad like me more proud than when the three year old figures out how to do something with technology. She seems genuinely proud of herself, and that makes me happy… like the first time she legitimately won a game of Wii Tennis, completed the difficult maze all by herself, or built a PC from scratch so she could play some Dora the Explorer game. Well... building her own PC hasn't happened yet, but maybe by the time she's four.
Have your kids been impacted by video games?
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Dude, video games rock! When I purchased Xbox 360 when it first came out, I used my son as the hook to convince my wife it was a sound investment in the boy. I explained that he could learn stuff, that it would improve his fine motor skills, yada-yada-yada. Of course, he was only four months old at the time so it was a bit of a stretch. However, she became really suspicious of my pitch when I was buying games like Gears of War, Call of Duty and Halo.
Luckily when we purchased our Wii, it wasn't a hard sell. She loves to play video games too!
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