Sorry, could you explain why? Because it soaks up parental time?
That being said, the amount of positive coming from their involvement in the game is incredible. Doing any large project requires considerable planning and imagination. "Survival Mode" requires resource management. They develop these skills by doing instead of sitting in a classroom and hearing about them. They read about it because they want to, boosting their reading skills. The run through the whole social scientific process in an authentic way (as opposed to the multi-step process taught in schools). And they even use it as an anchor to discuss other things. My five year old was confused about the word "chest" being used as "things that stores", then the eight year old says, "you know, Chest, like in Minecraft!" Five year old instantly understands. Thats just one example..it happens all the time.
I'm more concerned about what affect this has on my kids, not how much it drains me (they always drain me, that won't change).
> That being said, the amount of positive coming from their involvement in the game is incredible. Doing any large project requires considerable planning and imagination. "Survival Mode" requires resource management. They develop these skills by doing instead of sitting in a classroom and hearing about them. They read about it because they want to, boosting their reading skills. The run through the whole social scientific process in an authentic way (as opposed to the multi-step process taught in schools). And they even use it as an anchor to discuss other things. My five year old was confused about the word "chest" being used as "things that stores", then the eight year old says, "you know, Chest, like in Minecraft!" Five year old instantly understands. Thats just one example..it happens all the time.
Our kids are homeschooled, so I understand the benefit of ad-hoc learning. But I won't make that into an excuse to let them obsess over a video game for months at a time.
I would much rather they learn the same skills by building real things in real life. The benefit is that they can actually use these things.
For example, we are teaching them how to garden. They will get to eat the fruits of their labor. They helped me actually chop down a few of our trees, and they helped me saw them into firewood.
Having done these things with them, and seeing opportunities for even more fun activities, I just can't see Minecraft as anything more than escaping the real world for no sensible reason.
Just sharing my anecdotes, not trying to change opinions. I'm sure there's some actual research out there on the topic.
*time played, game modes, who/where they play, etc.
Now it all makes sense. You're fitting right into the home-schooling parent stereotype.
Many people who homeschool do so for religious reasons. The (comparative) isolation from their peers, combined with the tighter control they have over their children's experiences, makes it possible for them to "force" their children to believe in their religion.
Many don't object to this because of the religion itself; it's the fact that the parents are "abusing" their power to keep their kids from making their own choices.
Also, this isn't really a stereotype, but phrases like "eating the fruits of their labor" sound almost Amish. They homeschool, too.
You also sound negatively biased against parents handing down core values and religious beliefs to their children.
We'll have to disagree about both of these. And anything that stems from them.
Which, in our case, probably means this discussion should politely end here.
I hope your kids just turn out to be fine with it. You are betting on them that they are just like you.
I hope that the ones that get badly affected by your good intension can forgive you (for your strong believes)
Their father.
> I hope your kids just turn out to be fine with it. You are betting on them that they are just like you.
I trust they see and will always see that I'm doing my best.
> I hope that the ones that get badly affected by your good intension can forgive you (for your strong believes)
I trust that there is nothing to forgive, and that these hypothetical "bad effects" are all in your own worrying mind.
I hope that a long going process may start running in you mind based on this/your HN experience.
(poor kids, can't play games ;)
We could tell.
Its important to note the vast majority of lets play type videos are mom approved. Almost all of them. But once in awhile one comes up in rotation that's PG-13 or worse rating wrt language or behavior (serial killing in game pigs while making cop killer jokes and then uploading it anyway, wtf is wrong with you, boy?) (and edited to emphasize, the "big name" video guys are virtually all "mom-approved" the worst behavior and language is usually some goofball one off not a semi-pro show host wanna be)
Unless kids have dramatically changed in the last decade or two I know he's heard worse on the playground, its not the end of the world. Its better than watching TV, for example.
I imagine it comes from a line of thinking where the parent worries if their kids becomes too focused on one particular thing and spends too much time either doing it, talking about it, or thinking about. The parents may worry that their child's interests are not well-rounded enough. Perhaps "Minecraft time" is taking away from outdoor time, or music time, or sports time, etc.
A total ban seems harsh, but perhaps the child's interest is bordering on addiction and this an attempt to solve that problem (again, I'm not endorsing this, just trying to reason through it).
I know my parents were very unhappy with the amount of time that I would spend playing video games. They often called it an "addiction" and from an adult's point of view they may have been right. Personally, I don't think there's anything necessarily wrong with a child or adolescent immersing themselves in something for a period of time, as long as it's temporary. As an adult now, I certainly don't spend much time playing video games anymore and I see many facets of my life where that time investment as a child has paid off, but I can see where my parents' worries (even if misplaced) were coming from.
I would rather they learn how to build actual things that they can use. I'd love for them to learn how to build a real circuit or a real tree house, whatever.
I would rather them live in the real world.
Part of learning how to build something is being able to visualize it, prototype it, and understand the key principles.
Professional electrical engineers don't always begin by building physical circuits. They sometimes begin by laying them out in software, refining them in software, and then eventually printing a usable version.
MineCraft is a great way to explore the idea of building. So is lego, and construction kits of various sizes.
http://minecraft.gamepedia.com/Memory_circuit http://minecraft.gamepedia.com/Tutorials/Basic_Logic_Gates
I mean, my day job consists 100% of putting the right numbers in the right places in a completely virtual system that is entirely meaningless in the real world, that I cannot interact with and cannot use. These numbers don't do anything, they don't change anything, and they certainly won't build a treehouse I can go hide in when my parents get overbearing and obsessively controlling.
However... my day job consists of managing an entire Enterprise Resource Planning system, and the numbers I put in the right place are the resources of this company. The right numbers mean that people looking at them later on will get the right parts at the right time, and build things faster, and eventually clients will have their product on time and at best quality. The wrong numbers... well, 2+ year late deliveries and 2-million-dollar penalties are called "getting off easy" here.
So you see, your idea of what is imagination and useless, and what is "real world" and practical, definitely isn't relevant to the problem. The real question here is: Comparing between a childhood with minecraft, and a childhood without minecraft, which childhood will produce the more happy and productive and overall enriched humans later? And that's not a question about what you, as a parent, consider to be Real World™ or Imagination™. It's a question about what skills and what abilities and what methods of thinking the children will grow up with, and how they will apply and be able to use those abilities later in life.
The problem is about losing yourself to a video game for months on end, even having it take over the other parts of your life when you're not playing it.
Sure you can understand how different these things are? The first one is perfectly fine, the second one is really unhealthy.
I could use a script for this, and a variable. Here, let me try:
>The problem is about losing yourself to a job for months on end, even having it take over the other parts of your life when you're not doing it.
> The problem is about losing yourself to military training for months on end, even having it take over the other parts of your life when you're not doing it.
> The problem is about losing yourself to a scientific research project for months on end, even having it take over the other parts of your life when you're not working on it.
> The problem is about losing yourself to [INSERT MANY OTHER PERFECTLY HEALTHY THINGS] for months on end, even having it take over the other parts of your life when you're not [INSERT ACTIVIVTY VERB] it.
The root of the problem is that you single-mindedly see "video games" as something unhealthy to focus on, without any evidence that it even is unhealthy at all!
Where have you heard that video games are unhealthy? Was there any research done? Did you perform long-term experiments? How large was the sample size? What control groups were there?
In short, YOU KNOW NOTHING, and are doing this based entirely on your general impression that video games taking over one's life is more unhealthy than having something else (like school, or work, or surviving in the jungle, or building a tree house) occupy your thoughts.
I have plenty of evidence. I just haven't felt particularly compelled to spend my precious time conveying it to admittedly skeptical strangers online.
> Where have you heard that video games are unhealthy? Was there any research done? Did you perform long-term experiments? How large was the sample size? What control groups were there?
Contrary to popular belief, not all wisdom is obtained using the scientific method.
> In short, YOU KNOW NOTHING
I'm not sure why you feel you have the context to make such a bold claim, based on a few comments I posted to an internet forum.
But at least this demonstrates to me that your only goal is to talk and not to listen. In which case, this isn't a balanced discussion, and I'm out.
I've banned "Real Life" for my parents because that's all they ever talk about, all day, non-stop, whenever I'm nearby, for years. To this day they still talk about my "Real Life" and compare it to theirs and play "different Real Life" imagination games with eachother.
I would rather they learn how to do important things where they use their time and mental energy effectively. I'd love for them to learn how to imagine and design and have a project come to life, and see all the steps going from nothing to a completely realized construction, from idea to reality, whatever.
I would rather they don't waste their time hammering away at mind-numbing "day jobs" where they are bogged down by having to do all the manual steps and take care of every little detail and do all the menial work.
I would rather they develop their mental abilities rather than spend all that time repeating trivial actions (like all the repetitive, non-mind-enriching wood chopping required before you can even consider talking about building a tree house in "Real Life").
What I'm trying to say:
There are many advantages to being immersed in something "that isn't the real world", and avoiding menial, repetitive, dumb, costly labor and trial-and-error are some of them.
What you're doing with your ban is simply imposing your view of the world onto them, without having any sort of context as to what their lives will be like in the future with or without this ban, and without even the context of their own minds and what minecraft truly gives them.
The reason it's all they were / are talking about is that it's a whole environment to them, and if they still talk about it it's because they still have things within that environment to talk about.
It's also important to realize that specific skills taught in childhood are almost never as important as general abilities and methodology (except for certain basic required skills like walking, eating, etc.). Learning how to analyze the flaws in a design or creation and how to come up with a more elegant, time/resource-saving solution in general is going to help your children much more over the course of their lives than learning how to specifically arrange planks of wood together so that their floor is straight and solid.
To be completely honest, I think you're making a life-changing mistake by micromanaging your children's time and activities this way. Yes, your role as parent is to guide and educate. You should inform them of dangers, and consequences, and problems, of things they want to do or are doing or are interested about. You should take action whenever it is clear and without doubt that not taking action would lead them to harm... and explain what you did and why to them later! And by later, I mean the next day, not "when you're grown up". However, the key thing to keep in mind is that each time you impose a practical rule that you came up with, you unwillingly make them more like a clone of yourself. You force their actions, and thereby their thoughts, closer to yours, while hampering their own ability to learn about the world for themselves.
My recommendation: Talk with your children about why they like minecraft, what they do in minecraft, and why you think they shouldn't spend so much time in it. And then, most importantly, listen and understand what they have to say about it. Do not dismiss their thoughts. Do not come up with reasons why their arguments are invalid, or assume you have a better picture of the situation than they do. Think about it this way: They have two fully-functional brains, and both of their brains were thinking about this issue way more than you for way longer than you did. Are you ready to claim that whatever short time you've taken to consider the issue before banning minecraft is all you need to overrule two other human beings?
You're telling your daughters, indirectly, that you can make a better decision by thinking for a few days than they can possibly make after months of being fully involved in the subject?
Because this is what they will learn. They will learn that their parent has taken decisions and imposed rules that change their lives because said parent thought about it for a little while and came up with this idea, without asking them. They will learn that you think you know best, at all times, and that you think they are incompetent, and that you think they are incapable of thinking for themselves.
At worst, they may even think themselves incapable of thinking for themselves, and give up trying, and become faceless sponges absorbing whatever your education gives them, without any more personal growth or exploration of their own.
The least you could do is acknowledge his point.
Do you say the same about the "real world" in regards to programming? Is writing software, web pages, etc. not "real world" enough for you?
Question: Are they nearly as enthusiastic about building "real" circuits?
It's a virtual world. Our kids were not at all thinking about the Java bytecode that went into running it, or the x86_64 machine code that ran the JVM, etc.
> Question: Are they nearly as enthusiastic about building "real" circuits?
My 10-yo son was thoroughly loving the electronics kit we bought, making LEDs light up in different patterns depending on which SPST switch you pressed.
And...so? Why is it a bad thing to be able to work at a higher level of abstraction?
Moreover, there's less exposure to solder vapors, no chance of burning, and an ability to undo/redo, not to mention show it off to their friends or to you in a "cool" way.
Imagine how much your son might like it if you were to let him wire up more than LEDs, and instead do things like create a castle or amusement park or train system controlled with in-minecraft circuits.
where I work, they let children work with soldering irons too, and at first I very much wondered about the safety of this.
turns out, soldering irons aren't all that hot to do serious damage[0]. the worst they can generally do is a minor first-degree[1] burn wound and a seriously valuable learning experience.
what remains is a chance of fire hazard if they forget to switch things off. this obviously is a parent/teacher's responsibility.
(btw I agree with your general point, this is just an addition, from experience)
[0] unless you poke them in the eye, but there are a lot of objects you shouldn't poke in someone's eye.
[1] it takes some effort to get a second degree burn from a soldering iron, it can be done in theory, by accident, I've never seen it.
i am a professional programmer, and see programming time as productive because it is akin to circuit-building, engineering, etc. Even video game CREATION can be that way. But playing them..... I do it, but it is the worst bit of myself -- pretty much total rubbish lazy brain stimulation, on par with TV re-runs
even if it involves stimulating puzzles you are still marching through a virtual "to do" list. in a way it can be less stimulating than TV, in that there is often no human element to consider that may trip your mind up. nothing more to think about than the task.
i've been back into gaming for about 6 months, since work really burns me out & i cant always be active at night but im definitely not proud of it, even tho i play puzzle games. if you could just play Portal 2, Braid, w/e for a day or so then walk away it would be fine. But your brain starts getting rewired with habit.
If a parent can spare their kid from that mental monotony, why not?
You claimed that one reason you wanted to prevent your children from playing a game was their "obsession".
Children sometimes develop strong attachments to items of clothing. If a child developed a stron attachment to a jumper would you prevent them wearing it? Why is an obsession about an item of clothing different from enjoying a game?
I've prevented one of my children from wearing a favourite jumper (well, hoodie), either because it needed washing or was inappropriate. He likes to wear his hood up all the time and I require him to take it down rather than indulge his desire to not confront his surroundings - namely communicate with other people. He is like I was, afraid to initiate communication and willing to 'hide' to avoid it. But I was always far more fulfilled when I was unable to avoid other people and "forced" to make the effort to communicate; it seems the same with him.
Someone said 'call obsession "passion" and see how it fits now'. Would you call staying up all night, missing work, feeling terrible, ruining your sleep patterns "passion". That's more akin to addiction: I've been on a Minecraft binge recently. My analysis is that it allows me to escape the real world and control my interactions; it's definitely escapism for me. Yes, Minecraft has a lot of potential educational value but I'm very cautious as my personal history with computer games - and other things - has been one of unhealthy obsession.
Veg out with the computer? Well I'll allow that for a short time but to me real world interaction is also far more valuable; I can appreciate the position that sdegustis appears to be presenting. I'll let my kids play for an extended time on the computer/console with a friend, for example, but not by themselves.
It's interesting that the reactions here are similar to the reactions we had when we quit having a television. We have reneged, we now have non-broadcast TV: in part I see that as a failure.
I notice you've set noprocrast on ... a little like denying a child a favourite thing for a while ...?!
/slightly drunken early morning comment
Lack of energy and focus in our parenting.
Probably some social pressure is in there too; certainly being able to talk to people about something in the mass media eases social interactions.
Childcare availability - we don't live near family that could watch the kids whilst we go out. Also passively consuming is easier than actively participating; general poor motivation [on my part].
That would be my surface analysis.
Sweaters don't do this. Minecraft has.