I often feel paranoid about telling people I enjoy playing video games. I will be 40 in 4 years and God help me, I still love fragging noobs in Team Fortress 2. But I am a member of the Atari generation and I know there are others like me out there, especially now days since the explosion of portable and console gaming. Its only a matter of time before others join my ranks as an older gamer. Still, I have this deep-seeded fear of judgment from people who have more productive hobbies.
Of course the reason for my paranoia is retribution from people who believe I am wasting my time. I feel as if the stereotype of an overweight, under-achieving, and unmotivated wastoid, while beginning to crumble in today's digital revolution, still lingers in the minds of non-gamers. To those people I say, using the...uh, word of the great General Anthony McAuliffe, "Nuts!" Particularly in the arena of child rearing, I believe my experience with gaming has helped me stem the tide of stressful situations with which every parent is familiar. As every parent knows, a major responsibility is ensuring the safety of a toddler. The art of walking is not learned all at once and can take years to master. Lyla has been walking for about 6 months now but still has the gait of a drunken sailor. Falling down is a leading cause of tearful outbursts, most of which is simply for attention from the parents yet can still be very efficient at significantly increasing stress damage to the parent's body. The ability to predict and prevent a fall could be viewed as a superpower when considering that doing so saves the parent from any further anxiety...every little bit counts. Now I may look like a big-headed goofball, but my reflexes are keen. There is quite a lot of data on the correlation between video game playing and improved reflexes. I can honestly say, as a scientist, that I believe this to be true, mostly from personal experience where I catch something falling before it hits the ground. Sometimes I do so with such speed that I can't believe it myself. Its like that scene in Ronin where DeNiro purposely knocks a coffee mug off the table to test the skills of Stellan Skarsgard. I even have empirical evidence: I have 20/15 vision, which is superior to 20/20. My point being, there have been several real instances where my video game-honed reflexes have averted disaster by catching Ellie or Lyla from falls which could have seriously hurt them. I remember one time in particular, I was playing with Ellie on the bed, she jumped in a bad direction and I lunged with lightning speed, and caught her leg as she was keeling over.
Feeding time is another prime example, but in this case, hand and eye coordination comes into play. Lyla was a particularly messy eater. She would squirm to no end and make herself a moving target for incoming spoonfuls of baby food. To this day, she hates sitting in the high chair for meals. Whenever Larisa was done with Lyla after a feeding, there would be baby food everywhere. When I, on the other hand, took the feeding responsibility, there was nary a mess....Larisa gave me warnings on how messy it would be before the feeding, but then gave me praise and disbelief at how clean she was afterward. The same goes for the changing table. Lyla hates getting diapers changed. Getting a kid diapered and clothed takes a fair amount of deftness, especially when the kid has some kind of "changing-table" neurosis and wriggles like a little monkey.
Now, on the other end of the spectrum, video games can help me on a more social level, specifically in 2 arenas. For one thing, playing them gives me an activity that I can enjoy with my kids when they get a little bit older. It will be common ground on which we can meet. Ellie has watched me play games since she was a newborn and has even dabbled in some DS games, but she doesn't quite have the development in her hand/eye coordination yet, nor the mature logic to deal with some of the puzzles you can run into. But once she and Lyla get to be about 7ish, I think we can all start playing stuff together more regularly. I look forward to that. I'm sure that won't last of course, as they get to an age where they won't revere their parents as much. This is when the other benefit comes in. I have mentioned in the past that playing these games gives me a small window into the lives of younger people: how they talk, what drives them....a very basic glimpse of their mentality and motivations. Even at this rudimentary level, I believe this will be helpful in many ways in the future.
