Mother’s Day is a month away and at Not Your Mama’s Gamer we are looking forward to a little something special to celebrate mamas all over.
Are you a mother-child gaming team? Do you game together? Support each other’s gaming? Chat about gaming? Maybe you even share games or tell each other about the most recent DLC?
We would love to chat with some duos (or singles) about their gaming for our special episode. We are also looking for folks to contribute their own pre-recorded conversations about games (with their kids) for those who have kids like Sam, who would talk about Ni No Kuni for hours if you let her.
Please touch base with us by April 21st if you are interested so that we can figure out all of the details. Let’s make this happen folks, it seems like a whole lot of fun!
2 thoughts on “A Mother’s Day Special!”
Copying from FB, with additions: There is that whole thing about how I let my son play Left 4 Dead 1&2 when he was 4, ma’am. We always either played with him or sat next to him while he played to help and answer questions and make sure he wasn’t shooting his teammates. It’s the game he’s loved the most and that has held his attention the most. He’d always wanted to play games and never really had the patience or attention span until he came upon us one night, when he was supposed to be in bed, split-screening. We let him watch for a few minutes and explained the happenings. He was already a monster-obsessed kid. It was a natural thing for him to love.
We played with him and watched him develop from a child with a VERY short attention span into a smarter and more focused little man. He learned to strategize and cooperate better (rough for only children) and his general motor skills improved, too. I’m a big believer in the therapeutic qualities of gaming and I think it helped.
He likes others, but nothing like that. I can’t think of a single game he’s ever played without either Momma or Terry at his side, and even if a game isn’t co-op, he sits with us when we play, too (if it’s a game we’ll let him watch) and “helps.” But he has not focused on anything like he did L4D. I think it was the stakes — he didn’t want to be crushed by zombies. He likes Lego Star Wars, for instance, but all that happens there if you don’t play hard is you flutter out and get rebuilt. Jack hated going down in L4D and would work to stay on his feet. It gave him the motive that other games didn’t.
Certainly, it’s a violent game. They swear. And we’re really careful about his media consumption in all other ways, which is why we were always with him, so we could remark on the language or the violence. We bought him a stuff Tank from the official store, which is silly and purple and makes amazing sounds, just to lessen the realism factor. We explain what’s real and what isn’t and he seems to understand. I know it seems controversial to let a four year old play a game like this, but for our family, it was a great decision and I’d do it again. I just hope we find another game he loves as much, because he’s outgrown it now and I miss spending Saturday mornings snuggled up with my little man and a couple of Xbox controllers! We still play, but not as much. The last game we enjoyed as much together was Limbo, though I had to turn off the deaths… not so much for him but for me!
I agree that games that ask you to strategize are great for getting children to learn some critical thinking skills early, but I am worried about giving mature content to children too soon. I have been able to do the same with some of the Lego games and Ni No Kuni with Pea. Kids have enough to deal with, IMHO, without giving them graphic violence at that age…and there is less risk of them getting kicked out of school for depicting gun violence. I’m just saying.