Let Your Child Already Struggle With Video Games
I still find it hard to keep Joy-Cons in my eldest son’s hands. When I watch him stumble through every level of a Nintendo Switch video game, I want him to pause it so I can finish what he started. But about 10 minutes after hearing his loud exclamations of frustration, he eventually handed me the controllers and said, “Can you finish this for me?” I usually do what he wants, but to be honest, it doesn’t make me feel good.
A couple of years ago, I wrote about when you should introduce kids to video games, to learn how to satisfy my kids’ curiosity about the electronic device in our living room, and as a way to bond while learning something I loved. since I was a teenager.
As I was writing this story, I spoke on this topic with Dr. Sin Siyahan , co-director of the joint Doctoral Leadership in Education program with UC San Marcos at UC San Marcos. I still hear her words in my head every time I see my kids struggle with the game.
“You also teach them that they must be persistent,” she told me. “If they die three times and give up, that’s a bad lesson. You can use this as a learning opportunity.”
How do we allow children to learn to persevere in play?
My oldest son has been playing/wrestling with Luigi’s Mansion 3 since Christmas. He immediately launched the game’s story mode, in which a green-clad plumber brother hunts ghosts in a creepy hotel with a device very similar to the proton pack from Ghostbusters . It’s also a little tricky to get the Joy-Con to work, although the game gives a fairly detailed guide before running the rest of the game. The complexity of the gameplay quickly discouraged him.
After a few weeks of bad starts, I decided to start the game on my own and understood why my son didn’t want to continue: catching ghosts is hard, but it’s also fun once you get the hang of it. But one night he saw me play (and wrestle), and his interest flared up again. Showing him that even someone who has played video games for as long as I have made him feel less alone in his struggle to learn and complete the game.
The cool thing about Luigi’s Mansion 3 is that every room the character enters is like a puzzle that needs to be solved so you can move on, and I tried to show him that solving one room is a small achievable goal. This makes the game feel like a bag of Halloween candy: if you try to win it all at once, your stomach will hurt. The best way to empty your bag is to eat one candy bar at a time.
Do not remove the joystick and do not play for them
I remember the first time I played Super Mario World 3-D and saw the sad look on my son’s face when I asked for the Joy-Con to show him how it’s done. There was so much disappointment in his eyes, and I could tell that my lack of confidence in his abilities had broken his heart.
As hard as it was to turn off that voice in my head and keep from taking the Joy-Con away from him, I realized I had to let him learn how to solve problems on his own. Also, when he tries to give me a Joy-Con to go to the next room, as shown in my story at the beginning of the article, I refuse. But that doesn’t mean I won’t help him.
Play a game for them – a kind of
As I explained above, I started playing my game and I will save it in my own file, which means I am a little further in the game than he is. This strategy allows me to tell him how to move forward; the irony is that I often don’t even need to hint. One night his face lit up as he came up with something on his own over dinner, when his mind was relaxed. I just needed to confirm what he already knew. My heart filled when I saw his face when he put it all together and it’s definitely better than what I felt playing him.