The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:
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Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.
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I have a 7 year old. He's never played a video game outside of a DIY version of online chess against me.
I notice a lot of kids play Minecraft. I've never played it. This is a little odd since the entire reason I have a career is because I wanted to get into game development and learned to program C.
I would like to expose him to video games since I believe they have upside, but I'm pretty worried modern games are crack and educational benefits or whatever are oversold and not real.
He has an excellent attention span right now and we play a lot of card (MTG) and board games (Catan Jr) and I don't want to ruin that. Other families say once their kids play video games they stop caring about all of that other stuff and see their attention spans go to shit.
We homeschool him so he's not exactly surrounded by other kids trying to relate to him re: games but it's only a matter of time.
I don't myself play MTG and board games (that much), but I sorta knew guys who did in college. If I am in uncharitable mood , the MTG/Warhammer/tabletop looks almost as bad as gaming. It can be huge time-sink, which can ruin your education / early career transition, it becomes a "hobby" that furthers no other adult life goals, and your peers are likely to play inordinate amount of video games, anyway. Phone media is the technological designer drug, video games are the 80s crack epidemic, in comparison MTG is more wholesome, but in way as cocaine was when they put it into Coke.
I am only guess here, but I would recommend:
(1) Diet of limited amount of computer games, but important thing is not only the time limits but developing the mental muscle to cut off the "one more turn in Civ" getting in way of other more adult priorities.
(2) Try to avoid them starting socializing with kids who are failing at that.
There's board games, then there's those. I suspect the people playing things like Dominion or Seven Wonders generally would have a more limited relationship with the hobby than dedicated MTG and Warhammer players.
I do wonder if there is a way to both participate in "lifestyle games" like these without it being an undue weight on everything else in life.
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