All gamer parents want video games to be a positive part of family life, and parental controls can help achieve that with minimal arguments. Parental controls on consoles are something that you never think about until you need them. When you have a video-game-obsessed eight-year-old on your hands who sulks every time…
Takafumi Ozeki doesn’t just make his daughter’s school lunch, he makes it based on her drawings. The result is wonderful, touching and delicious.
Video games’ version of paternalism is usually reductive: parents and children rarely stray from the roles of protector and charge. You, the player, are almost always the parent (and always a father), chaperoning a character who is vulnerable.
If you’re into games yourself, playing video games with kids can be one of the great joys of parenthood (or aunt/unclehood, or godparenthood). It can also be a total pain in the ass.
I’m not a gearhead, nor would I ever be mistaken for one. But this past February, I went to a monster truck rally with my wife and 3-year-old son Michael. We all loved it. A lot.
In 1990, Bill Watterson created a Calvin and Hobbes storyline in which Calvin is bullied into playing baseball during recess. Watterson drew a relatable, cautionary tale about the dangers of cramming boys into neat little boxes. Everyone in this story wants Calvin to do something he hates, but even when he commits to…
In my first year as a parent, I’ve shunned VR games, sat out Destiny 2 and surprised myself by playing through Nioh. Despite all that, no game has been as tough to play in my new parenting life as Dishonored 2. I did not expect this.
This is what love is.
For the past year, my original Xbox One hasn’t been working properly.
My daughter is seven, and a few weeks ago her class spent the week choosing a subject to “investigate” (basically write reports on). The teacher might have been hoping they chose something like “nature”, or “factories”, or “history”, but the room of seven-year-old kids did the seven-year-old thing and chose “Pokémon”.
I had a baby nine months ago. As you might expect, this has significantly changed my relationship with video games, at least temporarily. It has made the Nintendo Switch my favorite console of all time, because I can play it both on the big screen on the occasional evening and in my hands during naptime/train…
As previously discussed, my son is getting pretty good at video games. Because of this, despite being only four years old, I’ve started letting him play Zelda: Breath of the Wild by himself. It has turned out to be a very good decision.
In the past couple of months there’s been a phrase that haunts me. It reverberates in my dreams and my darkest nightmares. It’s the first words I hear when I arrive home from work. It’s the first words I hear when being woken up at 5:30am on a still-dark Saturday morning. “Daddee. DADDEE. Can I play YOUR game.”
Friday, June 2, was National Doughnut Day in the States, the day we celebrate fried sweet dough, torus-shaped and otherwise. Nabisco celebrated this joyous holiday by reminding us that there’s nothing quite like a warm jelly doughnut, especially not a creme-filled sandwich cookie.
You and I, as adults, know to call things by their actual names. My kid is four, and does no such thing.
I heard that having kids changes the way you can play games. Nine weeks in with one boy and one girl born a minute apart, I can confirm that it’s true. This is what I’ve learned about playing games while raising twins:
