
Playing with my son (2014) - Tomte
https://medium.com/message/playing-with-my-son-e5226ff0a7c3
======
Bakary
I don't have studies to back it up, but my anecdotal experience with growing
up with video games is that it's not a good use of your youth if you take into
account the opportunity cost of doing other things. I noticed this once I
stopped playing them, and I didn't even play them that often to begin with. Of
course, I'm sure there are plenty of examples where video gaming led a kid to
having a fulfilling life (even ignoring the sample who actually turn it into a
professional career), but in general it feels as though games are not the
optimal conduit for this as the skills gained by playing them are generally
not transferable to anything else other than titles in the same genre.

The boost in mental acuity comes at the price of many hours spent. They say
time enjoyed isn't wasted but I've found that there are different types of
enjoyment and some are more rewarding than games in terms of pound for pound
satisfaction. Looking back, most of the time I spent gaming yielded relatively
few memorable moments and periods of personal growth, and all of these were
actually more about the people I played games with than the hobby itself. As I
said, it's all anecdotal, but I think worth investigating all the same.

That said, I'm sure the author's kid will be fine as he seems to be a smart
lad. I also wonder how he would fare against "I Wanna Be the Guy", although I
hope the guy doesn't put his son through that!

------
turtlebits
I may be old fashioned, but 4 seems way too young to start video games.
Especially non kid friendly ones with so much action on the screen.

But then again my wife are trying to delay any interactive screen time as long
as possible.

~~~
randlet
I was mouth agape through the whole article. Call me old fashioned too, but I
don't want my 5 year old killing things with swords when their grasp on what
is real and imaginary is so blurry. It blows my mind that most of the kids in
my daughter's junior kindergarten class have seen Star Wars movies, Spiderman,
and other violent movies.

I'm not against a 4 or 5 year old using a tablet for a limited account of time
for interactive educational 'games' but guns and swords is well over the line.

Edit: Contra at age 6!

~~~
scottLobster
When I was 4 and 5 I played with plastic swords, squirt guns and watched Power
Rangers. _shrug_ My 6 year old nephew plays Super Smash Brothers. When I was 6
I explicitly remember my friends playing Sonic and Super Mario and X-Wing/Tie-
Fighter. None of them grew up to be school shooters.

I'll limit the exposure time, but I'd let my kids play contra at 6. My parents
went the educational-games-only route until 6th grade, and I was shut out of a
lot of social situations as a result. No desire for my kids to go through
that.

~~~
randlet
"None of them grew up to be school shooters."

Please don't put implications in my post that aren't there. I'm not aware of
research that suggests video games _are or are not_ a factor in school
shootings and similar events.

Letting a kid play a game about killing people with machine guns at age 6 is
crazy to me. I was also shut out of social situations like seeing movies and
playing video games at a young age and I imagine my children will be to. It
hurt at the time sure, but life ain't always about getting what you want or
doing what everyone else is.

~~~
scottLobster
You implied that cartoonish violence like Contra will have substantially
negative psychological effects on children. I've never seen any support for
that and my own experiences tell me the opposite. A quick google search shows
evidence going both ways, so lacking time for an exhaustive analysis I'm
sticking with my experiences.

Take my anecdotes with as big a grain of salt as you like, but analytically
the benefits didn't outweigh the cons in my case. Not having access to the
same video games, movies and entertainment as my peers greatly damaged my
ability to form relationships at a young age. The only upside was perhaps a
marginal increase in analytical thinking skills, which was easily offset by
the anxiety/insecurities and resultant academic underperformance I had as a
result of underdeveloped social skills. Your kids' mileage may vary.

Sure I grew up and that's all long in the past now, but that doesn't mean it
was useful, justified, or harmless. When the fiancée and I decide to have
kids, I intend to give them every opportunity I can within reason, that
includes the resources for a vibrant social life if they want. Obviously I
won't be buying them Grand Theft Auto at age 6, but Star Wars? Absolutely.

~~~
randlet
"You implied that cartoonish violence like Contra will have substantially
negative psychological effects on children."

I do believe they have negative effects on children but I don't believe that
extends to school shootings.

Are you sure it was a lack of video games and movies that let you to have
trouble forming relationships? My anecdote is that even though I had virtually
no video games (except at friends houses) or television until highschool I was
still able to form (and maintain for 30+ years) friendships with my peers who
had very different rules than I did, and had a full social life all through
school (I do consider myself a strong introvert and have had social anxiety
issues in past, but I would never point at lack of TV/games growing up as a
root cause).

Like you said, neither one of us has hard data, only anecdotal stories with
different outcomes for similar "media" parenting strategies.

Even if there is no negative consequence on an individual child relative to
their peer group, I still believe (can't support with evidence obviously) that
exposing children to violence in video games and movies is a net societal
negative that I don't intend to contribute to.

edit: Just wanted to say I appreciate your perspective as it's one I hadn't
even considered before and gave me some food for thought.

~~~
scottLobster
Fair enough, I imagine it largely depends on peer group as well. Literally
everyone I had anything remotely in common with growing up played video games,
watched adult-ish TV, saw PG-13+ movies, etc from a young age. My parents
outright refused to let me have any of those things, and as a result no one
wanted to come over and play at my house, I always sucked when playing with
the other kids at birthday parties, I wasn't allowed to see any PG-13+ movies
with them, etc. It got to the point where I actually started academically
teaching myself the rules of video games by reading websites and strategy
guides, and memorizing summaries of TV shows and movies just so I could
participate in conversations at lunch. I'm not saying it was the only issue (I
was meh on sports and shy in general), but it was definitely a big hurdle.
Like being the only one forbidden from playing cards at a poker tournament
where literally everybody else is playing.

If my peer group's interests had been more varied maybe it would have worked
out differently. So I imagine it depends on the school/neighborhood.

Edit: At any rate, I appreciate your perspective as well. An upbringing
without TV (let alone the rest) where it wasn't a hindrance is about as alien
to me as it gets, pretty sure both my parents' families had TVs growing up. :)
As it stands I see such things as ultimately harmless, but I'll admit that if
I didn't experience media as such a crucial social lubricant, I'd probably
strictly limit (although I'd stop short of forbidding) my kids from the more
violent stuff as well, at least until they were 8+, just in case.

------
papaver
i think the only unfortunate thing about this story is the lack of
experiencing life on old pcs. the kiddo has definitely mastered video games
and learned a whole bunch doing it but it's too bad he didn't have that same
experience on a computer. one thing a computer gives you is a tool, which
really taught me all about hacking things in so many ways. hand eye
coordination and reflex gained from playing video games is awesome but problem
solving skills are way more useful in the long run. the old school adventure
games taught patience and problem solving like few games do these days.

~~~
waxpancake
Hi, I wrote the article! We played a bunch of PC stuff along the way,
including a good chunk of the Lucasarts catalog. We skipped the text adventure
genre entirely when he was little, but we're making up for that now that he
loves reading for fun.

[https://twitter.com/waxpancake/status/868668282953318400](https://twitter.com/waxpancake/status/868668282953318400)

We just beat Wishbringer last week. Thinking Planetfall or Zork next.

------
roel_v
So what's a good machine to play games with kids 4-6 on? I have a wii, but the
games suck, and a steam tv streamer thing but by the time I habe the remotes
configured correctly they are back to playing with their legos... Are there
any machines with an hdmi connector that have a bunch of games appropriate for
that age?

~~~
Xoros
What about a recalbox on a raspberry pi ? Or a raspicade ?

Only a few bucks, hdmi output, a lot of different gamepads compatibility.
Works with my 7 years old kids !

~~~
patrickdavey
I've been thinking of this for a while. What gamepads do you recommend? Is
recallbox/raspicade better than the retro pi project ?

~~~
abritinthebay
Xbox USB controllers are great all rounders.

------
pkamb
Shouldn't half the fun be in hooking the games up to an old CRT tv? Blowing on
the cartridges? Cheating to use that modern Plug-and-Play joystick console!

~~~
throwanem
Even nostalgia can't cast a rosy glow over that huge pain in the proverbial.
The fun was in playing the games - getting them to run in the first place,
especially the battered rentals which were so often the only option when a
single cartridge cost $50 or so, was anything but.

~~~
khedoros1
It's not too bad. Keep the pins clean, and the ones in the console itself bent
straight, and getting a game to run only takes a couple tries ;-)

------
prawn
I tried some of the NES games with my 4.5 yo. Many original games are very
unforgiving with their controls and he quickly favoured Dr Mario where there
was less immediate penalty for a mistake. And even with that, he quickly went
back to Lego and chess.

------
peapicker
What gets me about this article is the header graphic showing an Atari
2600/VCS, but the version of Pac-Man on the screen is clearly the Atari
400/800 version!!! (grin)

------
vilhelm_s
Reminds me of how Laszlo Polgar decided to (successfully!) demonstrate that
any child can become a prodigy with the right upbringing, by teaching his
three children chess starting from age 5.

[http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/05/30/hungarian-education-
iii...](http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/05/30/hungarian-education-iii-
mastering-the-core-teachings-of-the-budapestians/)

------
jawon
I'm a parent of two young children and I thought this was atrocious when I
read it in 2014. You're not raising buddies, you're raising independent
adults. You're there to help them find their direction, not tie them to yours.
Letting a young child with a developing mind and a growing body spend hundreds
of hours pressing a button when a few pixels overlap in order to fuel your
pride and self-satisfaction is almost literary in its patheticness and its
potential personal consequences. It's the geek equivalent of toddler beauty
contests and for my part just as well thought of.

~~~
waxpancake
Hi, I wrote the article! Thanks for your commentary, snidely passing judgement
on me and my family. Much appreciated.

The article was intended to be a little provocative, more than a little
tongue-in-cheek, but suffice it to say, I never would've continued playing
videogames with him if he didn't show interest.

He was nothing less than absurdly enthusiastic about it, and it was a way for
us to kill time together, but I never pushed games on him for a moment. Eliot,
like many of his friends, loves the creativity and collaboration that comes
with the medium of games, and the social aspects of playing them with his
friends and family.

He's turning 13 this week, and has taken classes on making games himself in
GameMaker, and is now modding the games that he loves. I'm happy he's found a
hobby he loves, and I'm proud of him.

~~~
randlet
I had a similarly negative view about your article and "passed judgment on
you" for making the choices you made for your kid. In particular I have a very
negative view about e.g. 6 year olds using guns to kill enemies in video
games. If the article was about what I would consider to be more constructive
video games I probably wouldn't have given it a second thought (eh I probably
would still judge but not so negatively!). Did you ever worry about a game
like Contra having a negative effect on Eliot? Thanks for chiming in :)

~~~
waxpancake
Have you played Contra? The weapons are about as realistic as Mega Man's.

It looks more like using bubbles to pop an endless stream of bad guys, Bubble
Bobble-style.

[https://media.giphy.com/media/DpXqHdILXRRDi/giphy.gif](https://media.giphy.com/media/DpXqHdILXRRDi/giphy.gif)

So, no, I never worried about anything in an NES game having a negative effect
on him.

~~~
randlet
Yes I've played/beaten Contra. I guess we'll have to agree to disagree because
to me it looks like shooting a lot of people with guns.

