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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Advice. This can be in response to a request for advice or just something that you think could be generally useful for many people here.
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Encouragement. Probably best directed at specific users, but if you feel like just encouraging people in general I don't think anyone is going to object. I don't think I really need to say this, but just to be clear; encouragement should have a generally positive tone and not shame people (if people feel that shame might be an effective tool for motivating people, please discuss this so we can form a group consensus on how to use it rather than just trying it).
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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'm staring down the barrel of this as well, my daughter is 5. We play a smattering of board games with her, with the occasional concession (Carcassonne, Ingenious, Kingdomino, My First Castle Panic), and she's watched me play some old games (Super Mario Brothers, Gradius, Galaga). I'm trying to plant the seeds of good behavior by choosing games that have a natural end time (1 credit, 3 lives, etc) and then walking away when I'm done. I also emphasize that I finish all my "daddy chores" after dinner, and she has to have her teeth brushed and get ready for bed before she can watch me play.
Lately she hasn't really cared to watch me play anything, and has preferred I read Lord of the Rings to her instead.
My wife has most of the same fears you do about video games devouring her attention, but none of the first hand experience to discern addicting slop from a fun game, so it's all scary to her.
Personally, I think going with old, offline, preferably couch coop experiences is best. Any old two player NES or SNES game or old arcade games. I have a retro lan in my office, and that may come into play at some point, but it's not part of the plan at the moment. I plan to keep it limited, and keep it in person and social within the friends and family. I do want to avoid hard time stops though. I knew kids who's parents put everyone on strict 15m time limits, and it drove me up a wall when I'd be having a really good run in say, Super Mario Brothers, and they booted me off in World 5 with 4 lives left. I do want my kid to have that sense of accomplishment that video games can give you, and not cutting her legs out from under her with arbitrary limits. But I'll cross that bridge when I get to it I suppose.
As a child I was given a restriction of 10 minutes a week with a Gameboy, including starting up the game, and the only game I got was one of the first-gen Pokemon games. It was not fun. I don't think I ever got past Erika before the Gameboy or the cartridge died.
I kind of made up for it by binging the shit out of different Pokemon games later when I had access to a computer and learned what emulators were.
Rofl. 10 minutes per week is a joke. Cruel and unusual punishment.
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