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