Why Playing Video Games Makes You a Better Dad

As the Father of a 9 year old boy who loves video games as much as I do, I really dug the following article posted in Forbes. Video games have helped my son and I bond in ways few other activities have. We laugh, we play, we compete and most important, we spend quality time together. XBox, PlayStation, Wii, iPod Touch, Nintendo DS...it doesn't matter, we play them all and we Love it:) I wish I could have shared this kind experience with my father, but I am grateful I can share it with my Son.
RPM 

By Jordan Shapiro

When my wife and I separated, I moved into my parents’ house. Now I spend a lot of the days and nights that I have custody of our two small boys (ages 5 & 7) sitting next to them on my mother’s sofa playing New Super Mario Brothers on the Wii.
I know how it sounds: pathetic.

I’m a thirty-five year old man, living with my parents, manipulating my thumbs to try and save Princess Peach from Koopa’s castle. They write Saturday Night Live sketches to make fun of people like me.
Conveniently, it is fashionable to blame the economy for the poor salary I earn as adjunct faculty at the university. I’d need to earn at least twice as much to be able to repair my credit and move into my own place.
What about the video games? Does playing with my kids count as quality engaged ‘family-time’?

I think so.

 

For one thing, my kids love it. When I pick them up from their mother’s house, they immediately start screaming from the back seat of the car, “Can we play Mario when we get to your house?” We fight over who get’s the best power-ups. We exchange high fives whenever we level-up from one world to the next.
But just because my kids like it doesn’t mean it is good for them. They would also be happy if I gave them candy for breakfast and let them stay up all night watching horror movies.

Video games are different. This is the world of my kids’ imagination. When I take it seriously (and participate along side of them), I’m not only validating their inner world by giving positive reinforcement to the things that matter most to them, I’m also providing fun and supportive space in which a sophisticated emotional intelligence can emerge.

Of course, I don’t just sit there silently, fingering the D-pad. I don’t embody the role of the almost-middle-aged slacker. Instead, I embody the role of the ‘father.’
I don’t allow the game console to be merely a babysitting computer that distracts my kids while I flirt with my girlfriend on Facetime. Instead, it is something that father and sons do together.
Most importantly, I talk with my boys about what it’s like to play the game.

• What emotions go with jumping high enough onto the flagpole that you get a free life?
• How do you feel when you lose because your little brother made Yellow Toad accidentally hop on your polka-dotted cranium?
• Don’t you think it’s kind of crazy that you get better at winning by losing over and over again?

Child psychologists have always recognized how important play is to a child’s cognitive and emotional development.
One of the early proponents of play therapy was preeminent psychoanalyst Melanie Klein. Deriving her own theories about kids from the discoveries that Sigmund Freud made while working with adults, Klein argued that in play, children act out the unconscious narrative dramas that shape their everyday lives.

Likewise, C.G. Jung developed the practice of “Active Imagination,” in which individuals, children and adults alike, are encouraged to engage with the images, characters, and stories that inhabit the unconscious part of the psyche. Jung believed that it is only by taking seriously what is ordinarily dismissed as mere fantasy that one can become, what he called, “individuated.”

Both of these theories were instrumental in the development of the kinds of play therapy, such as “Sandplay,” that are now ubiquitous in the consultation room.
But can I really compare non-directive psychodynamic therapy to sitting on my mother’s couch collecting magic-mushrooms and fire-power-flowers with my two sons? Yes.

Although the common view is that video games are an escape from the real world, I think video games can function as interactive mythology. They can be understood as non-linear stories that help individuals derive meaning from the complicated paradoxes of everyday life.