Our History of Video Games

Last time, I promised that this post would be about what inspired me to start this blog. When I moved back to GA to be with Ben and Lissie, I found myself spending a lot more "down time" with her than I had ever been used to. While Ben and I were dating, and only seeing each other maybe three to four hours at a time, Felicity and I would always have fun activities planned for every second. We went to Pumpkin patches, we went to ball games, we went to Pizzerias, and of course, in February before I moved back we had a whole week together in Walt Disney World.

What I quickly learned about being a full-time parent though was that there's a lot of time where you just...have nothing to do. I guess it should have been common sense, but it really hit me rather unexpectedly one day when it was just me and her in the house on a rainy day and I had nothing to do together with her. You can't go to a pumpkin patch every day of the week. You can't eat out every night. And you certainly can't just up and go to Disney World when you live 9 hours away. Pinterest was full of awesome Super-Mom ideas, like "turn off all the lights and hide glow sticks in the house for a fun game of glow-in-the-dark-hide-and-seek!" and I guess that sounds pretty cool, but I don't keep glow sticks in overstock at my house, and hide-and-seek isn't any fun at 3 in the afternoon in a home with massive bay windows that let in a lot of light, even on stormy days.

So on the first day that I realized that I was completely unprepared to do anything with this child for 8 hours, I grabbed my old GameCube controller, hooked her up, and sat her next to me on the couch.

"What are we going to play?" She asked, awkwardly gripping her GameCube controller that looked as though it was designed for someone with four or more hands.

"We're going to play Sonic the Hedgehog." I said, feeling a little defeated. "You'll like it. It's fun, and it used to be my favorite game when I was your age."

I will admit that I was already feeling a twinge of guilt. Like I mentioned in the last post, Pinterest and Tumblr and Facebook and almost every site that I read had said that video games were terrible, evil, the lazy parent's solution to entertaining a child! But what else could I do? I wasn't about to attempt to make homemade playdough on the stovetop again. That was a disaster that almost required the use of an exorcist the last time I tried it.

I put in the Sonic Classic Collection on my Wii, which is a GameCube disc, and holds all the original Sonic the Hedgehog games that I used to play as a child with my Dad. I picked Sonic the Hedgehog 3, because it had the most useful Tails, and I let Felicity pick him while I was Sonic. I figured since Tails is cute, fuzzy, and can't die and use up one of the lives, it would be a great starting character for her. Basically, as long as Sonic stays alive, Tails can follow behind him without suffering any serious damage or messing up the game progression. If Tails dies, he immediately respawns where Sonic waits for him. Tails can also do really useful things like use his flying tails to lift Sonic to places where he couldn't reach on his own.

To my surprise, Felicity took to it instantly. She laughed harder than I had ever heard her laugh. She was ridiculously awful at being Tails, she died almost every four or five steps that she took, but she absolutely loved it when I would stand very still and wait for her to fly me up to a new ledge to explore. "Wait, Mama!" She'd call excitedly as I was getting carried away going through loop-de-loops. "Wait for me!"

I'd stop and wait for her to catch up with me, then we'd both spin-dash together and zoom off again. We played that together for about an hour and a half, and then we turned it off for a while and played dress-up in her room.

The first thing she wanted me to do was tie two ribbons around her waist so she would have two "tails" like Tails did in the game. I thought it was pretty cute and texted a picture to my brother, who one-upped me the next day when we went to visit my parents-- he got her an actual Sonic the Hedgehog Hat. (It had come with one of his Sonic preorders at GameStore years ago.)

Felicity was SO excited that she could BE Sonic the Hedgehog. She wore that hat all summer. She wore it to playgrounds where she zoomed around yelling "Gotta go fast!" She wore it to her grandparents. She wore it to the grocery store. Every day, she and I would do another level in Sonic on the Wii, and I noticed that she started getting really good really fast. Soon she was able to keep up with me and I wouldn't have to slow down. She could jump and destroy enemies on her own. She could navigate through the puzzles without having any joystick trouble.

One day a kid on the playground asked about her hat, and she said proudly "This is my Sonic hat. Have you ever played Sonic? It's a fun game that my Mama and I play together!" Her use of words struck me as interesting. "Mama and I play together", she had said. This was something she associated with spending time with me. I wasn't using it as a babysitting device or a pacifier. This was something that she and I were learning and having fun with as we bonded.

It was that which started me thinking about the other ways she had "grown" from our time playing Sonic. Her motor skills had certainly improved with each level. She was now able to navigate traps almost as quickly as I could, and while she had trouble in the beginning with occasionally losing control of the joystick, now she seemed to be an expert at controlling it.

She also took a great deal of pride in "assisting" me to higher levels and ledges. "You can't go there without me!" She'd crow excitedly as I came upon a large cliff. "You need me to help you, right?"
"Right," I'd say, affirming her not-so-subtly-hidden-inquiry. "I can't do it alone!." She wanted to feel valuable in the game. She didn't want to be a sidekick--she wanted to be an irreplaceable partner.

After she went to bed one night, I jotted down a list of things that were improving from her Sonic experience.

1) Motor Skills
2) Confidence
3) Parent-Child Bonding

As I looked at the list, I started wondering how, if at all, I grew from my experiences with video games as a child. I remembered a few very detailed memories from my childhood. I remembered the first time I held a joystick as opposed to a d-pad (Directional pad, used in classic controllers like the NES or the Sega Genesis: has a cross-hair shaped directional pad that allows you to move in linear directions only) and how long it took me to adjust to the 3D movement of my character. I remembered learning strategy from Pokemon and figuring out that I had to make a very specific battle plan to progress past the harder trainers. I remembered sitting next to my dad and going through the harder levels in Donkey Kong or Banjo-Kazooie together with him and how much I enjoyed having a dad who was into "cool" stuff like video games.

(Dad and Jon playing Donkey Kong together...Oh lord, this is another story for another time.)

 I got different levels of growth at different stages of my development. When I was older, I started playing games for the storyline and adventure that they offered. I fell in love with some of my video game characters as much as I had with some of my book characters. I was able to think critically about some of the plotlines and grow from them as a person. I learned good sportsmanship and anger management, especially after the three millionth time I died at the same pitfall in Super Mario Brothers.

It hit me that there was a LOT that I could teach Felicity from the video game world. There was so much we could learn together that could potentially help her grow the same way those experiences helped me grow, and by golly, no Pinterest site was going to make me feel bad for trying to reach out to my daughter in the best way that I knew how. I vowed to no longer feel guilty about exposing her to electronics, especially since we stay very well rounded and have read lots of books, played on lots of playgrounds, and have even been practicing writing abilities since she was four years old. I promised myself that I would use this as the learning opportunity that it was.

So that's why I decided to embrace the video game world, and what better way to do that than by starting a blog! Next time I am going to write up a generic guide on the Dos and Don'ts of letting your kid play video games. Hope you enjoyed this post. Happy Gaming!

May the Force be with you...

-Steph

The Danger Of Video Games

Hello, folks. My name is Stephanie Kuzy Jenkins and I'm here to tell you all about the horrible, irreparable, gruesome, unspeakable damage that video games are inflicting upon your child. Yes, yours!

Just kidding. Let's start this thing off a little less menacing, shall we?

This is me:

I'm a 23 year old graduate from the University of Georgia. I'm married to my wonderful husband, Ben, and with him I got the most amazing stepdaughter in the entire world, Felicity. Within the past year, the three of us have undergone numerous changes, such as braving long distances, having a wedding, moving in together, buying a house, and adjusting to our new roles as family members. I decided to work part time at the job I kept through high school and college: managing at the-store-everyone-knows-sells-video-games-but-whose-social-networking-policy-prevents-me-from-saying-its-actual-name called GameStore, and to stay home the rest of the time with my daughter.

Once I became a mother, naturally I wanted to research all that I could about the subject in order to prepare myself to be the best I could be for Felicity. I learned a lot simply by reading other parents' experiences with raising children, and some things required me to draw my own conclusion. There's only so much you can learn from a computer screen, and the rest has to come from hands-on experience, mistakes and all. Coming from a "non-traditional" parent's viewpoint has been a learning experience as well. Pinterest and Tumblr became my very best friends on the days when Felicity was at school and I was off work, and I would spend hours perusing them trying to get the best ideas and activities for Lissie and I to do together.

I am a firm believer in "Active Parenting", that is, being actively and continuously involved in raising your child. Children gather your level of affection based on how much interest you show in the things they enjoy. My idea of active parenting on an entertainment level involves being interested and excited about the things Lissie likes, experiencing them together with her, and also offering to show her things that I am interested in (that are age appropriate for her, of course.)

(The number one thing Felicity enjoys is Darth Vader... but we'll talk more about that later.)

However, when I was browsing these parenting sites and advice columns, I noticed something a little disheartening to me. Almost every website, while promoting a healthy and holistic lifestyle (something I strive for) also denounced video games and other electronic media as "terrible for children's social skills", "detrimental to brain development", "an absolute nightmare for child growth" and worse. As an avid gamer and Geek Mom myself, I was devastated. Video games are a huge part of my life. I have really fond memories of learning to play them with my Dad when I was growing up, and a lot of my school friends, even from a young age, were the video game geeks like myself who would come over for a play date and play Mario Kart or Pokemon with me. I consider myself very well adjusted, with no more troubles than the average adolescent struggled with, and I've certainly never gotten into any sort of violence-related trouble.

When I stopped to think about it, though, I started to understand where some of these websites might be coming from. Working at the GameStore, while giving me the opportunity to meet and befriend several awesome gamers such as myself and interact with other Baby Geeks and their Geek Moms, has also shown me a dark, nasty underside of the electronic world. First Controversial Statement Of The Blog: It is highly inappropriate to let your child play games such as Grand Theft Auto. Games that feature (predominantly, I might add!)  content such as drugs, rape, prostitution, burglary, murder, and assault are simply not acceptable to give to your child.

Whenever a parent would come up to my counter holding the offending M-rated game, I would always say: "I would like to warn you that this game contains mature content and is not suitable for children under the age of 17."
"Yeah, he watches cable TV." The parent would sometimes say offhandedly.
"This game contains drugs, sex, and murder." I'd insist. "It's really recommended for older players."
"I don't care. Let him have it, it's what he wants." The parent would say, rolling their eyes.

It was interactions like these that made me ANGRY. I'm ANGRY that these games, while fun for older audiences, are affecting children as young as five or six. I'm ANGRY that parents are taking a media that I love and have thrived in and are using it to harm their children. This is not how video games were intended to be used. This is not what I have spent the past 10 years defending vehemently to anyone who says that video games are bad. And I am very angry that this has polluted what could be an awesome way to bond and encourage children.

(Felicity and I playing Skylanders together, a game notably free of sex, drugs, and prostitutes.)

Let me also add something here: This isn't a blog to hate on Grand Theft Auto. I've played it. I enjoyed it. I particularly enjoyed stealing the Taco Truck out of the hospital parking lot and driving it straight into the lake while a vaguely-Latino man chased after me yelling "Nooooo! My tacos! You crashed my tacos!!!" This isn't a blog to tell adults what they can and can't play, nor is it intended to be a judgmental blog towards people who choose to play games for themselves that have a mature rating.

There are far too many blogs that will tell you that the solution is to ban all video games from your child and to restrict all electronic media from your home. This is not one of those. This is a blog to promote and assist in responsible electronically-friendly parenting. Video games were a great part of my childhood and I am enjoying every second I get to share them with my own daughter. I truly believe that with proper supervision and a commitment to active parenting, any form of electronic entertainment can be turned into a great experience for both parents and children alike, resulting in awesome benefits for the child such as increased motor skills, higher reading level, a closer parent-child bond, and boosted confidence.

My blog will be focused on mine and Felicity's experiences together, daily or weekly, and the benefits I see her getting from the time we spend together. I'll also be writing reviews of games and featuring a weekly Game Of The Week that I recommend for parents of children of certain ages. My hope is that Geek Parents such as myself will find a place where they can feel comfortable with their decision to let their child play video games, and maybe even to be a resource for parents who have children that play video games, but were not very experienced with video games themselves, and need a little guidance on what they can do to make that experience a positive one. I'm also coming from a "non-traditional" parent standpoint, being a stepmother, and I'm sure some of my posts will reflect that as well. Felicity's mother and I have a very friendly relationship, which has been great for raising her in a resentment-free environment with open access to all her family members on all sides. Remember-- the only parent in the world that knows your child as well as you do is YOU. So read with your own discretion, enjoy the little tidbits of parenting that I share here, and Happy Gaming!!

My Lissie and I love Legend of Zelda, Pokemon, Mario, Donkey Kong, Star Wars, Harry Potter, and we have just started Kingdom Hearts together! The next post will be about how I got the inspiration to start this blog in the first place: when I heard her exclaim with excitement "I did it all by myself!"

May the Force be with you...

-Steph