Video Games

Its a good thing Ms. Aiken gave me a topic today because otherwise I would have stared at this blank screen until I blogged about the color white. It has been a long day and its only 10:56am. My day started at 2am when a sick child woke me up with a tummyache and a headache. Finally after a trip to Kroger at 3am for tylenol, fixing a few glasses of water, holding her hair, and rubbing her back she fell asleep at 6am. So now I sit here with a blog topic! Video Games! I dont like most of them. I have 2 kids, my son is 9 and my daughter 6. We only own 1 gaming system and its a Wii. On that Wii, we have family sports games that we all play together like bowling, tennis, golf, darts, and lots of others. I dont really classify that as video games as much as I do family time that doesnt cost alot of money. The video games I dont like are the ones that take hours out of your day, days out of your weeks, and weeks out of your month! Many games include forms of violence or foul language or goals that take a year to acheive. There are alot of things kids should be doing besides playing video games. It takes away from family time, gives them a false sense of reality, and can even lead to obesity and laziness. Too many children these days spend all of their time indoors just trying to go up a level in some fantasy world and dont take the time to go outside and experience the world as a kid. Video games are fun and that can be addicting to a kid to the point of everything they do revolving around a game or trying to rush through things to get back to their gaming system. If video game time is rationed and parents moniter the games their children play, they can be used as an educational tool. There are games out there that are geared toward education that can be chosen and used as a tool to increase learning skills. But even then, it doesnt take the place of one on one time with a parent teaching their child. I just dont see a point in exposing children to violent games or video games with no value just to appease them.