Nightchilde-2
First Post
diaglo said:
Amen to that. My daughter would probably have no interest in gaming at all if it weren't for the fact that I'd be gaming with her.
How are you going to introduce your kids to gaming, if at all?
- Thread starter Altalazar
- Start date
Amen to that. My daughter would probably have no interest in gaming at all if it weren't for the fact that I'd be gaming with her.
MerakSpielman
First Post
stinkin' double posts.
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MerakSpielman
First Post
First of all, you have to know your kid. Some kids are a lot more likely to shove things in their mouths than others. My son is turning 2 this month. He went through a phase from "when he could start grabbing things" to about 13 months where he would shove anything he could grab into his mouth. Then he lost interest in that method of exploring the world. After that, he only shoved food into his mouth (and if he decides he doesn't like it, it comes right back out). He's found that dice are a lot more fun for rolling than they are for eating. He grabs them in a fist, shakes his fist wildly over his head, then drops it on the table and triumphantly says a number. He rolled like 2d6 the other day and started jabbing his finger at them 'counting' "One two three six nine twelve!" Kids are so cute.Angcuru said:
On the off-topic of when to have kids, well, I'm in the sooner is better camp. Sure, if you wait 'till later you're more financially stabe and all that, but frankly kids could care less. If you feed 'em, love 'em, and play with 'em, they don't care if they're living in a 5 bedroom house or a 1 bedroom apartment. The thing that's scarey about thinking about having kids is that they become instantly the most important thing in your life. More important than hobbies, career, extended family, etc... Before they're born the prospect of having something usurp your priorities like that can be daunting, but to be honest, after they're born and you hold them for the first time, you find that you don't really mind that much.
Just my 2cp.
Altalazar
First Post
I'm not going to try and make my kids play RPGs, though I'm sure I'll play plenty of tabletop games with them. I assume if I game, they'll see me doing it and perhaps get an interest from that. Kids learn, more than anything else, from just the example of their parents. Which is why saying one thing and doing another can cause a lot of problems with child rearing...
I am looking forward to having kids, and I also want to retire without having them around, but I should still be able to make that - I'm older than my wife, but not THAT old. We are financially secure, have our house (plenty big, finished basement (perfect for gaming) four bedrooms, three bathrooms - excellent location, good school district - basically we have everything we need for kids but time. And there is nothing we can do about the time until I graduate (work and school combined take up about 90-120 hours per week) - we really don't have any for kids right now - the only option we'd have if we had some now is for me to drop out of school, which is not an option. Otherwise, we'd pretty much need someone else to raise them 24/7, with maybe time for one day a week with the kids, and that is not a way to raise a kid.
We want to have three, though we may stop at two, who knows. Three, though, is enough for a good gaming group.
I am looking forward to having kids, and I also want to retire without having them around, but I should still be able to make that - I'm older than my wife, but not THAT old. We are financially secure, have our house (plenty big, finished basement (perfect for gaming) four bedrooms, three bathrooms - excellent location, good school district - basically we have everything we need for kids but time. And there is nothing we can do about the time until I graduate (work and school combined take up about 90-120 hours per week) - we really don't have any for kids right now - the only option we'd have if we had some now is for me to drop out of school, which is not an option. Otherwise, we'd pretty much need someone else to raise them 24/7, with maybe time for one day a week with the kids, and that is not a way to raise a kid.
We want to have three, though we may stop at two, who knows. Three, though, is enough for a good gaming group.
WizarDru
Adventurer
We have two, 6 and 3.5. Both of them are interested in 'the dice game' or just 'the game', but for different reasons. My son loves to sit with any of my players and look at all the monsters in the Monster Manual. Both of them love the miniatures and various Dwarven Forge and Hirst Arts materials we currently have.
My son and daughter ask all sorts of questions whenever we get D&D minis (one reason it's great that they're plastic) or Heroclix. Yesterday, we picked up two packs of Heroclix, and my kids wanted details on each character (Is she good? Is he a bad guy? I'm him, Daddy. The Samurai is a good guy.) Then my son lined up the good guys (Iceman, Gambit and Psylocke) against the bad guys (Mystique, Destiny, a Hand Ninja and a con artist) and had the Silver Samurai turn into a good guy as they battled across the kitchen table. That's my boy.
Honestly, though, if they decide they want to play, at some point, I might run a game for them...but that's in the future, and only when it doesn't interfere with school and other things. D&D players certainly weren't ostracized at my High School....heck, most people had played it at least once, back in the early 80s.
As TW said, RPGs aren't the cause of someone not focusing on school or work, any more than drugs, alcohol, internet chat rooms, Everquest, video games, sports or any other activity is. That's a symptom, not a cause. The people I knew in school who played D&D to the exclusion of schoolwork had other, much more deep-seated issues than the game.
D&D is a leisure time activity, and should be viewed as such. I don't see it as a source of embarassment, and I didn't then, either. If you act as if you're doing something to be embarrased about, though, people will react to it. If you act as if gaming is something to keep a secret, then people are going to continue to believe the nonsense they hear about it from uninformed sources.
The older I get, the more fondly I think of how my mother accepted my gaming, even if she didn't fully understand what it was. She let us host the games at my house, reviewed it, saw that it was harmless (and, in fact, educational and healthy) and never discouraged it. (Damn, I miss her).
My son and daughter ask all sorts of questions whenever we get D&D minis (one reason it's great that they're plastic) or Heroclix. Yesterday, we picked up two packs of Heroclix, and my kids wanted details on each character (Is she good? Is he a bad guy? I'm him, Daddy. The Samurai is a good guy.) Then my son lined up the good guys (Iceman, Gambit and Psylocke) against the bad guys (Mystique, Destiny, a Hand Ninja and a con artist) and had the Silver Samurai turn into a good guy as they battled across the kitchen table. That's my boy.
Honestly, though, if they decide they want to play, at some point, I might run a game for them...but that's in the future, and only when it doesn't interfere with school and other things. D&D players certainly weren't ostracized at my High School....heck, most people had played it at least once, back in the early 80s.
As TW said, RPGs aren't the cause of someone not focusing on school or work, any more than drugs, alcohol, internet chat rooms, Everquest, video games, sports or any other activity is. That's a symptom, not a cause. The people I knew in school who played D&D to the exclusion of schoolwork had other, much more deep-seated issues than the game.
D&D is a leisure time activity, and should be viewed as such. I don't see it as a source of embarassment, and I didn't then, either. If you act as if you're doing something to be embarrased about, though, people will react to it. If you act as if gaming is something to keep a secret, then people are going to continue to believe the nonsense they hear about it from uninformed sources.
The older I get, the more fondly I think of how my mother accepted my gaming, even if she didn't fully understand what it was. She let us host the games at my house, reviewed it, saw that it was harmless (and, in fact, educational and healthy) and never discouraged it. (Damn, I miss her).
MerakSpielman
First Post
D&D can be very educational, especially for math skills. My wife and I had a problem a few months ago figuring out something for her PbP game. It went something like: The party is in a wagon. They stop the wagon and let the rogue scout ahead, moving silently and hiding, for about 20 minutes. Then they go after him. Unbeknownst to the players, owlbears are lying in ambush a mile down the road. Who reaches the owlbears first? It's just like the word problems you did in school except more interesting.
jester47
First Post
And so I sayeth "I can trace many of my social and academic problems back to gaming, and I don't want them to have those problems."
Wow, this is really going to come back to haunt me... better clarify it. In all it is a summary. My experience with RPGs has been overwhelmingly positive. It has given me strong relationships and given me an edge in planning and creativity. Not to mention accounting. However, it was very engrosing, and well, it made learning time management skills very difficult (at least for me) because I would just get lost in it. A social life requires time and since I was spending most of it gaming (or in gaming related activites) my social circle was with the gamers in my group. This was late elementry through junior high. I straightened out in high school, but then discovered the hacker subculture and the rave scene. THAT really put the kaibash on the grades... (Bs and Cs instead of As and Bs)
As for the social aspect I find that gaming encouraged me to look past peoples social abilities and allow them into my life. This is not all bad. However, when gaming (or anything else) is the sole determining factor of your social circle (i.e. gaming is how you make friends) then it can be detrimental. As junior high went, gaming largely determined my close friends there and I believe that since I had that easy way of making friends ("hey, you game... wanna check out our group?") my social skills suffered and did not develop as fast as they could have. However high school helped fixed that. (I went to a rad high school).
So basicly I would prefer it if my kid (fictional as he/she is) did not get so far into somthing that it presents the same challenges. I think one of the reasons I got into it so much was that my age was in single digits when I first started playing. I quit for a while but started up again in the very low double digits.
So I personally think that it is best to find it in the teens, and this is why I am so weird about not teaching my non-existant kids to play and letting them find it on thier own.
Aaron.
Wow, this is really going to come back to haunt me... better clarify it. In all it is a summary. My experience with RPGs has been overwhelmingly positive. It has given me strong relationships and given me an edge in planning and creativity. Not to mention accounting. However, it was very engrosing, and well, it made learning time management skills very difficult (at least for me) because I would just get lost in it. A social life requires time and since I was spending most of it gaming (or in gaming related activites) my social circle was with the gamers in my group. This was late elementry through junior high. I straightened out in high school, but then discovered the hacker subculture and the rave scene. THAT really put the kaibash on the grades... (Bs and Cs instead of As and Bs)
As for the social aspect I find that gaming encouraged me to look past peoples social abilities and allow them into my life. This is not all bad. However, when gaming (or anything else) is the sole determining factor of your social circle (i.e. gaming is how you make friends) then it can be detrimental. As junior high went, gaming largely determined my close friends there and I believe that since I had that easy way of making friends ("hey, you game... wanna check out our group?") my social skills suffered and did not develop as fast as they could have. However high school helped fixed that. (I went to a rad high school).
So basicly I would prefer it if my kid (fictional as he/she is) did not get so far into somthing that it presents the same challenges. I think one of the reasons I got into it so much was that my age was in single digits when I first started playing. I quit for a while but started up again in the very low double digits.
So I personally think that it is best to find it in the teens, and this is why I am so weird about not teaching my non-existant kids to play and letting them find it on thier own.
Aaron.
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WizarDru
Adventurer
Trust me when I say that a lot of your perspectives on parenting change when you have kids...I don't say that with any sort of derision, but as a simple fact that every person I know who's had kids find that some things change when the rubber meets the road, so to speak. Practice and theory, like in so many things, sometimes differ radically.jester47 said:
Ian Sturrock
First Post
There's a fairly lenghthy account of how I introduced my three-and-a-half-year-old son Kyle to tabletop roleplaying, in the form of Skull & Bones, on my livejournal at
http://www.livejournal.com/users/serpentstar
It's the second post down at that URL, posted December 2nd 2003.
http://www.livejournal.com/users/serpentstar
It's the second post down at that URL, posted December 2nd 2003.
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