Friday, May 21, 2010

Video Games?

I think we've come to the point in Evan's short life where we need to make some decisions about video games. Jeff has an Xbox 360 and he plays video games occasionally, mostly Madden, but he definitely doesn't over do it. Evan will watch him play sometimes and likes to hold a controller, but doesn't really know what to do with it. For Christmas, his Uncle and Grandma got him a V-Smile and he'll play it, if you're right there to do everything for him. Needless to say, I don't get that one out too much right now.

The real problem? This old Game Boy Advance that a friend let me borrow a few years back. (That I apparently forgot to give back, oops, sorry about that Carin!) It only has one game cartridge, a set of old Atari games, like Pit Fall and many others. I had completely forgotten we still had it, but came across it a few months back and thought it might be something fun for Evan to look at when we were out at restaurants. For the longest time, he didn't pay it much attention, but that's changed!

At first he just liked pushing the buttons and pretending to play, and he'd usually get bored with it pretty quickly. Gradually he started to catch on and now I think he's really playing some of the games. He can sit with that Game Boy for a good half hour, maybe longer. In the morning, he gets himself dressed and goes downstairs to "play his game" until we get up.

When he wasn't into it, I didn't think about the need to place limits. But I think the time has come. I do NOT want my son to be one of those children ruled by video games. I've even seen parents letting their kids play hand helds at church. I'm sorry, but that's ridiculous! We've always had a limit set for cartoons (which I've totally been slacking on this last month of pregnancy.) And honestly, we've set the limit more for ourselves than for him. It's so easy to turn the cartoons on and let them run all day. If I didn't have the 2 cartoon rule, that's what I'd be tempted to do.

We're still talking about what the video game limit will be. But we'll probably let him keep the morning routine and he likes to play it in the car, which both work out pretty well for us! And obviously that's what's most important, right?!

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