Not Yet. Part II.

Last week I wrote that I would rather spend my time reading to my children than showing and praising them for pushing the correct buttons on my laptop as they play games, even word, color or counting games from reputable websites such as Sesame Street and BigFishGames. What I failed to mention is that the optimal time for very young children to sit and play video games is the same “best” time for them to be read to. It is the time they are most affectionate, willing to be held, and ready to learn. Why squander it?

Too often I have heard that online games help develop one’s social skills by allowing him or her to “communicate” with others because they can “chat” with several players at once. Those players, whom may be sitting next-door or halfway around the world, can, if they want to, “chat” back, too. It’s communication, right? I doubt it. That’s synonymous to saying it’s better for people to twitter than talk! The only real way to learn to have meaningful conversations is to converse, frequently, within a diverse community of garrulous souls. Talking. It’s a basic skill; and once learned, kids will have it forever.

Now I don’t want to get to far ahead of myself. A paragraph ago I was talking about very young children, my eldest age, that is. And in the space of one short paragraph, this one, once it’s finished, I’ll interchange my ideas about very young children with pre-teens and then with young adults. I am aware of this and have done so deliberately. See, the longer I am at-home the clearer it is to me that what I do right now, regularly, deliberately or not will have an everlasting effect on my children. I’m not alone on this thinking. Plenty of research has shown that kids are like sponges: they take in their environments, for better or worse, and memorize, mimic and continually learn new things everyday. It’s no wonder that most toddlers learn to operate the television and DVD remotes, telephone, and other sophisticated devices around the house before their third birthday. And I’ve said this before: parents have children; it’s not the other way around. It’s our responsibility to do the best we can by them and recognize that what we expose or allow our children to be exposed to will help shape their personalities.

I came across an interesting website the other afternoon: www.mediafamily.org. In a nutshell, the creator of the site, Dr. David Walsh, goes into detail about how 60-90 percent of the most popular video games are violent; how television and gaming violence has a stronger effect on young children than previously thought; and how any and all screen time, from the largest wide-screen television to the smallest hand-held video game, for young children will manipulate the wiring in his or her brain. It’s scary stuff.

We live in an information age. Technology is an integral part of life and every professional job, well … just about every profession job. That doesn’t mean, however, that just because one is able to comfortably sit in front of a computer screen for eight hours a day playing video games that he or she have a distinct advantage over non-game players. Simply sitting on one’s haunches is not a highly regarded skill in the workplace.

Kids really don’t know much about computers, anyways. Sure, they do know how to “do” certain things: find free music, download video to You Tube, and sign on and play games, but do they really know how to utilize that powerful CPU hidden under the up / down / spacebar keys used to move his or her character into or out of trouble? It’s like walking along the beach. One is close to the water, one can smell the water, and one may even touch the water from time to time, but besides helping one work on his or her tan, none of it will help him or her learn how to swim any better. Unless a child plans to become a professional video game tester or “fly” drone airplanes for the US Navy over some Middle East country in the near future, adroitly jockeying a joystick and pushing a series of button, no matter how far apart they are located on the keyboard, is not a very marketable skill.

I’m not sure when I am going to introduce my kids to our computer or computer games. I imagine they’ll get accustomed to using the computer by making digital photo albums or holiday cards at some point in time. And, they’ll probably start becoming hooked to video games around the same time they attend public school, but not today. For now, I’m going to shelter them from the evils of gaming and random online google searches until I’ve been able to put a little more thought into the subject.

From my lofty tower in the sky, six years from reality, where I do not have to make these contentious decisions right now and I can spew out my opinions without debate from either child, I say, “No. Not yet! Thank you very much.”