The Benefits of Video Games

Peter Gray of Psychology Today has a new post about video games out.  I absolutely love it!  For years I have felt like a loner, even within my unschooling group, in my belief that when I allow my son to make choices in the games he plays and the amount of time he spends playing those games, there is a reason.  My favorite statement from this post is, "I have a very high opinion of children's abilities to make good choices about how to use their free time, as long as they really have choices." 

Alexander has never had a time limit on the amount of time he plays video games and at 15 years old, he is a good kid.  Over the years I have seen amazing characteristics in this kid who loves setting goals for himself.  The goals may be in how far he will get in a video game or that he will write in his journal every day.  He sets goals for himself as he sees they are appropriate in his life and devotes the time needed to accomplish the goal.  I have seen a kid that wakes up every single morning excited to tell me about conversations he had while playing XBOX LIVE, strategies he used in completing his goal in a game, and evaluations of the games he plays.  He is also a kid that will wake up and ask if I can sit with him while he shows me pictures of WWI, explains to me how WWI started, the history of countries taking over other countries,and wants to know how I learned geography in school.  He is amazed to find out that even though I had geography in school in wasn't taught in relation to anything except being a subject in school.  He is also amazed that I have learned more about geography through his teachings than I ever did in school. I find that I am learning so much from him not only from the books that he reads but from the video games he plays.  We often find ourselves searching online to answer questions he has about the games he plays. 

It seems that there is a constant fear in parents that video games are going to make their kids violent, lazy, or some other awful things.  Here are some "side effects" I have seen of my son setting his own time limits on video games:

• A desire to learn the metric system so he knew how far he was shooting in a game.
• A need to learn about the Cold War, the Missile Crisis, and other historical events that are presented in his games.
• Planning out strategies that often involve him drawing out pictures of what he plans to do when he returns to his game.
• Learning to use a jigsaw so he could create guns out of wood that were similar to the ones used in his games.  This takes a lot of problem solving.
• The gift of giving as he made many guns for his friends and family also.
• Working with his dad to make his own metal knife that attached to his hand as in the game Assassin's Creed.  
• A strong relationship with his dad as they have had a tradition for years now of waking up early every Sunday morning and playing video games.  I loved it the other night when Alexander was playing one of the Halo games and my husband said, "Oh, we haven't played that in a long time."  It brought back memories for both of them.
• The ability to set his own time schedule.  I think parents often think that if they let their children choose how often and how long they use electronics, they will never stop.  Alexander is known in the neighborhood as a very responsible teenager with multiple dog sitting jobs, babysitting jobs, and a newsletter job.  His personality is one where if he agrees to a job, he is going to do that job 100%.  So, he has always been a good manager of his own time.  He sets his timer and knows when he needs to stop playing games so that he can attend to the responsibilities that he has set for himself.
• A kid that has had the opportunity to work out conflicts online with friends and also had the opportunity to say "no" to the conflict by not playing with those creating the conflict.
• Friendships that have had great memories of playing together.  A group of friends recently played a game they hadn't played together in a while and they instantly all had memories of how each person played the game. 

There are many more "side effects" that have come from allowing my son to be who he is and not ask him to engage in activities that I find appropriate for him.  He woke up the other morning and said he had stayed up late reading about war strategies.  I said, "Honestly, that is something I can never imagine myself reading, but when you summarize it for me, it is quite exciting."  It is the same with video games.  I can't imagine myself playing them, but he is not me.

Sometimes I wish I would have journaled everything I saw my son learning from playing video games, I know I could have made a great book out of it.  But, I think I learned early on that what I was seeing was only a snippet of what was really going on.  My son chose/chooses to play numerous hours of video games because they satisfy his personality for learning and I could never capture what is truly being learned and experienced.  In my opinion, when we trust our kids to learn in the way that best fits who they are as individuals rather than who we are as individuals, it is one of the best gifts we can give them.