I recently re-encountered this post that I made on a homeschooling mailing list (November 14, 2010)
I'm a gamer. My gaming was pretty self moderated as a kid and it worked fairly well for me, but I'm naturally pretty motivated. I consider myself a digital native. We got our first computer back in 1978. The first word my younger brother learned how to spell at age 2 was "Run; R, U, N, enter!".
As I remember it, when I was about 7 I decided that the computer was taking up too much time so I took a year off. I don't remember being encouraged to do this by anyone, or even discussing it with anyone either.
I think it's really important for parents to give kids other options. As a kid I was quite isolated ("gifted", poor social skills etc.) which meant that for a lot of the time I had a social group of 2; me and my younger brother. We lived close to a park so I did a lot of tree climbing and things. We had a lot of books, both fiction and reference and I will forever thank my Mum for answering questions with a chipper "I don't know! Look it up and tell me about it!"
Growing up I remember spending a LOT of time bored. "Muuuuuum, I'm booored. What can I do?".... "Well if you have nothing to do you could clean your room?...." is NOT the answer I needed to hear. I think that kids don't always know the scope of their options unless they have been exposed to a lot of ideas. My brother and I wrote stories, made music, drew pictures, performed plays etc, but in my opinion, my brother would never have come into his own as a social being had my uncle not introduced us to dice-based role-playing games.
Not interfering in your child's learning process is one thing, but I agree that offering other things to do is a great plan. I look at it like food - fatty food is not evil, but it does taste good and is habit forming. If you don't give your kids the option of eating fruit and other healthy snacks then they will fall back on the nommy stuff. This can displace important nutrients. If you don't overtly offer kids enriching opportunities they are unlikely to find them for themselves if they are distracted by time sinks like video gaming. This can impact on a child developing social/interpersonal skills, gross motor skills, spacial awareness and other such things.
Humans are made to move.
Sensationalist rubbish taken with a grain of salt; if you are sitting around rather than climbing trees, mucking about with friends, building huts, kneading bread, riding bikes, threading beads, walking the dog or kicking a ball then you are at higher risk of all the illnesses of a solitary, sedentary lifestyle.
Trust yourself. Think about things that you "have a problem with" and if you think it's important, let kids know. Parents are there to guide and influence their kids as a more knowledgeable other, just don't expect their decisions to be based on anything other than their own experiences.
My feeling on this sort of thing is that it's important to be honest and up-front about your feelings, otherwise you end up with your family members getting the impression that you disapprove of something but no actual idea of what that thing is and they have to fill in the blanks themselves.
Hypothetical example: Shared computer, and Dad is miffed that daughter is spending so much time on computer because he wants to wind down (browse TradeMe and check emails). Dad grumbles around the house. Daughter senses it's her fault and assumes that Dad doesn't like her using Facebook. Knowing Dad likes building things, she decides to log off Facebook and look up how to make a bird-house instead. Dad is still grumpy and daughter feels put out. No solution in sight. If you are clear about your needs everyone can work together to find solutions.
Seems I have rambled enough. Hope that was a helpful perspective :)
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3 comments:
My mum is a bit of a computer nerd. Even now she rambles on to me about linux while my eyes glaze over. She was the supervisor at a tiny correspondence based country school and she decided in 1986 or 7 that we would have a computer for the school so all the kids pitched in at a local farmers shearing shed in shearing season and we bought an amstrad.
Much later we got a desktop computer for home and I became quite an addict.Mum and Dad moderated our use by hiding the cable - however the jug cord worked just as well - hur hur.
We had a pretty countrified upbringing with loads of rambling, biking and swimming - with no TV a computer was our entertainment 'junkfood'
Some of my best memories are based on games played on the computer with friends and watching my friends play computer games or vice versa - but also reading, tramping and basic kids exploring stuff.
It was a nice balance and like you I found I had upswings and downswings.
I am interested that I played some pretty violent games - Wolfenstein, Doom, Dune, Warcraft etc and still came out pretty non violent/pacifist love thy fellow man etc...
Now my son has discovered technology and at the ripe age of 3.5 he is outsmarting me on my smartphone.
I feel like I am flying blind a bit, what rules to reinforce? Where to draw the line and what harm can I cause him?
The only rule we have so far set is that the computer is in the family space so it is not a 'hide in a dark corner do secret things' appliance.
Parenting....
This is something that I've come head to head with more than once, persoanlly having been highly regulated in TV use... not more than a 1/2 hour per day on weekdays, and an hour each weekend day... not including documentaries, news etc... they could be watched and not be part of the restriction.
Computers were something we got to interact with rarely when we were at a certain friends...assuming mutual friends weren't there with their much younger and much more PC competent kids who would hog it ;P
I spent hours and days climbing up the valley's trees, mucking about in the muddy estuary, exploring up the creek, mucking about with the horses that were grazing there, building huts...
As an adult I pursued a career that focused on learning child brain and physical development... okay initial physical, it wasn't until I became a parent that I went on to learn more about the brain, and the impact of attachment and physical movement on the brain's development.
prior to becoming a parent, I had determined that NO CHILD OF MINE would have any exposure to a screen until they were at least 6 years old. Having a tech junkie for a father, made this an impossibility... unless ofcourse I was happy to have my sons have no contact with their father either...
The biggest challenge for me came when the youngest was 4 1/2... a time when there is a tremendous amount of growth, and alot of testosterone is released. This can be a very emotional time with a lot of angry outbursts. For my youngest this included extreme rage, and extremely low energy levels for prolonged periods. The strain of growth on his internal systems were such, that he quite literally did not have the ability to move many of his muscles. He also did not yet read.What he did have was a Nintendo DS and LEGO Battles.
That kid spent almost 4 months playing this game almost continuously... and I spent the majority of that time fretting and challenging myself to find the balance of movement, and honouring the fact that clearly he had an internal need, and that if I let him explore it fully, he would eventually sate that need, and move on to other things.
There were times when I didn't manage as wellas other days. sometimes the charging cord "couldn't be found anywhere".
For the most part however I reminded myself of the studies and educational philosophies I had read thart made sense to me, that advocated letting it run it's course.
OH BOY was I delighted when he finished that game, andput it aside.
Over a year later, he's barely touched the DS, he revisits from time to time, and prefers other game cartridges. he is actively running outside, and although not yet climbing trees and what not, we have recently moved to an area where this is a possiblity.
The next time one of my children go through a period where they have that need to obsessively play a game on the pc, I will almost certainly struggle again, although a little less so based on this first success.
One of the things I strive fopr is balance in activities, nutrition etc... one of the things I'm starting to comprehend is that the balance is a LIFE long balance, not a DAILY. so a 4 month obsession of game playing, is now being balanced with an approximate 30-60 minutes a day on the PCand the rest of the time is spent questioning, learning, investigating and exploring the physical, natural, and social world.
I'm fairly confident that the game playing was driven as much by the fact that it was something he could do requiring minimal physical effort, while being actively engaging and intellectually stimulating, as much as the fact that is was a game...
and one should not under estimate how important games are in our home :)
What is your feeling on playing "educational" games? I personally think that kids are learning all sorts of things when they play games. A quote that I heard recently was that "what is learned is part of how it is learned and how it is used".."students learn what they do", which includes what is difficult/easy, what is culturally normal, what is valued by the people around them, etc. They learn the methods of the medium by which they are learning (In my nearly 2 year old's case that's things like how to use a mouse, how to turn up and down the volume on the speakers, etc.)
I'd prefer my sons to be playing problem solving puzzle games, story adventures, or resource management things, than point and click action shooters. My only real concern is that my kids are going to lack the conviction to try things when they get difficult because my oldest has learned all about letters when he was interested....
but I think I'm possibly being a bit of a throwback. If the need to know is there they will find their own motivation, right?
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