With some firm limitations, I find that video games contribute enough camaraderie and joy to our family life to be worth their cost. It's so easy to lose the proper ratio there, though. As soon as I have to ask the kids to stop pestering me for more Nintendo time or another laptop turn, enough joy is gone that having the devices in our home isn't worth it anymore. So I am pretty systematic about making sure the proper ratio is kept up.
This afternoon my seven-year-old soon-to-be stepdaughter approached me to politely ask if she could be included in our "video gaming outdoor reading system um rule set." We had just bought a new dance game, a Harry Potter game, and a rhythm game, and she wanted in on all of those after watching my eleven-year-old son play . I had already checked in with her father about it, so I was able to say a breezy, "Certainly!" and explain how it works.
My rule is, you have to spend twice as much time either reading or outside as you do playing with electronics (or watching a sibling play with them). To keep track of this, for about two years now, I've used a bead board. I just made a new one (from linen, embroidery floss, Perler beads and thumb tacks) to include the stepdaughters, and here's a picture of it.
This afternoon my seven-year-old soon-to-be stepdaughter approached me to politely ask if she could be included in our "video gaming outdoor reading system um rule set." We had just bought a new dance game, a Harry Potter game, and a rhythm game, and she wanted in on all of those after watching my eleven-year-old son play . I had already checked in with her father about it, so I was able to say a breezy, "Certainly!" and explain how it works.
My rule is, you have to spend twice as much time either reading or outside as you do playing with electronics (or watching a sibling play with them). To keep track of this, for about two years now, I've used a bead board. I just made a new one (from linen, embroidery floss, Perler beads and thumb tacks) to include the stepdaughters, and here's a picture of it.
When a bead is on the right, a child may spend that bead for 15 minutes of electronics time. Push it back over to the left to spend it. To get a bead put over on the right, the child must spend 30 minutes outside or reading. I hang the chart up behind and above the TV and I ask the children to tell me if they're moving beads. They're honest with it, though. They like having more cut and dried access than they had with their previous system, which was just Mama's whim.
We have a few other rules around video games -- no using cheats, if it makes you cry or yell you're off games for a day, and no games after dinner or on holidays or before lessons -- but that one little bead system makes most of the difference in how it feels to have electronics available to the children. No one yells, cries, spends all day zoning out on the games, demands time against their sibling's time. No one has a chance to get obsessed. Best of all, the children are still having a childhood, my sons are still readers who love books, and no one is nature-deprived. I love simple mechanical solutions to big complex familial-sociological issues. Our "video gaming outdoor reading system um rule set" definitely epitomizes that.
We have a few other rules around video games -- no using cheats, if it makes you cry or yell you're off games for a day, and no games after dinner or on holidays or before lessons -- but that one little bead system makes most of the difference in how it feels to have electronics available to the children. No one yells, cries, spends all day zoning out on the games, demands time against their sibling's time. No one has a chance to get obsessed. Best of all, the children are still having a childhood, my sons are still readers who love books, and no one is nature-deprived. I love simple mechanical solutions to big complex familial-sociological issues. Our "video gaming outdoor reading system um rule set" definitely epitomizes that.