Families and Gaming

To quote Mathew Broderick’s character from the hit movie Ferris Bueller’s day off "Life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it" and that is the truth about your children. They will go from two years old to twenty and moving out in a blink of an eye. According to Whitney English(1) that is why it is important to spend as much time with them as you can, especially when they are young so they will have a stronger bond with you past their teenage years into adulthood.

 

Did you know that playing games make you smart? Studies (Gwen Dewar 2) have shown that video games not only have increased players hand eye coordination but also increased their problem solving skills. Well guess what, board games and card games do that as well and when played in a family oriented space they learn much more.

 

With the help from the wonderful columnists at Parentfurther.com (3) you can learn to designate time in your day-to-day routine to spend that time with your family. That day for my family is Mondays after work, we call it family game night. Now it doesn't always work out, but we try to do this every Monday night. It doesn't have to be all night either, we just make sure that we spend some time together either playing a card game, video game, or a board game. The important thing is that you spend time together in a way that everyone can enjoy. For my family we try to play games that can keep my little kids attention but can also build certain problem solving skills without my children knowing that they are developing (pretty sneaky). I will go more in depth about those games in future blogs but a quick few are Clue; analytical skills, Monopoly; addition and subtraction, Settlers of Cataan Jr; planning ahead, or just plain Hungry Hungry Hippos; hand-eye coordination.

 

Works Cited

 

1. Whitney English - Why it is important to spend time with friends and family

 

2. Gwen Dewar Ph.D - Board Game Kids
 

3. ParentFurther.com - Spending Quality Time with Your Child