What to do?  Check out Clive Thompson’s commentary You Grew Up Playing Shoot’em-Up Games. Why Can’t Your Kids? - from Wired.com for some thoughts on this:

Gamers like me have spent years railing against ill-informed parents and politicians who’ve blamed games for making kids violent, unimaginative, fat or worse. But now we’re in a weird position: We’re the first generation that is young enough to have grown up playing games, but old enough to have kids.

So it turns out that, whoops, now we’ve got to make sober calls about what sort of entertainment is good or bad for our children. And what, precisely, are we deciding? I started making calls to my gamer posse find out.

Parenting is one of the hardest, and most important, activities that any of us can ever try to master.  And it is only getting more and more complicated as our children “grow up” faster and the tools and information they have available to them increase.

Having said that, Happy Thanksgiving to all my readers here in the US.  And to my non-US readers, enjoy the time you have with your family, whether it is a formal get together like our Thanksgiving or just a weekend in the park.

Though Tao is obviously quite gifted (an understatement), the description of his childhood, and how his parents handled his talent, is very telling as well. [emphasis is mine]

[Terry's father] Billy Tao knew the trajectories of child prodigies like Jay Luo, who graduated with a mathematics degree from Boise State University in 1982 at the age of 12, but who has since vanished from the world of mathematics.

“I initially thought Terry would be just like one of them, to graduate as early as possible,” he said. But after talking to experts on education for gifted children, he changed his mind.

His parents decided not to push him into college full time, so he split his time between high school and Flinders University, the local university in Adelaide. He finally enrolled as a full-time college student at Flinders when he was 14, two years after he would have graduated had his parents pushed him only according to his academic abilities.

The Taos had different challenges in raising their other two sons, although all three excelled in math. Trevor, two years younger than Terry, is autistic with top-level chess skills and the musical savant gift to play back on the piano a musical piece — even one played by an entire orchestra — after hearing it just once. He completed a Ph.D. in mathematics and now works for the Defense Science and Technology Organization in Australia.

The youngest, Nigel, told his father that he was “not another Terry,” and his parents let him learn at a less accelerated pace. Nigel, with degrees in economics, math and computer science, now works as a computer engineer for Google Australia.

But what really caught my eye was Billy Tao’s summary of how they approached their kids’ learning:

All along, we tend to emphasize the joy of learning. The fun is doing something, not winning something.

Words to live by, indeed.

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This astute observation from my son came at the end of an interesting conversation we had about lunar eclipses. We were driving east on I-44 in Southwest Missouri as the sun went down in the rear-view mirror. A short time later, we saw the moon coming out from behind some hills in front of us.

When I pointed the moon out to my son, he said, “It’s supposed to be a full moon tonight.” Which was odd, since what we saw appeared to be a crescent moon. “Maybe it’s just blocked by some clouds,” I tried, not really believing it myself.

Not long after, we stopped for gas. On getting back in the car, we noticed that the moon was now a “half-crescent,” something that doesn’t normally occur. Knowing now that it wasn’t the clouds I offered the only explanation I could think of – a lunar eclipse.

I explained that the shadow on the moon was actually the shadow of the earth. Having never experienced one, and obviously never exposed to it in science class, he asked what, to me, was the best question possible: How exactly do eclipses work?

I won’t bother you with the details of the discussion that followed, but we got to the point where I had to say, “I used to know how to figure that out, but I’ve forgotten.” Which, I’m sure you’ve figured out by now, led to the question I opened this post with.

Part of it may be me getting old, but I think it mostly comes down to the old saying: Use it or Lose it. Mastery – fluency – in any pursuit requires constant practice. And one of the most important things that we can master, and thus continually practice, is the ability and desire to ask questions, to figure out how the world around us works.

For a lot of great photos of the 03 March 07 total lunar eclipse from around the world, check out the ‘loony’ group on flickr.

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The Bruners have pretty much the opposite recommendation, basically telling parents to avoid exposing your kids to video games at all. As a replacement/alternative, they recommend “you identify five or six possible categories of interest for your child and invest the time and money necessary to explore options, trying them out until you find that perfect game, hobby, sport, book series, old television show DVD set, or whatever tickles your child’s fancy.” (Except for video games, of course.)

The pursuit of mastery, of any skill, requires a great deal of passion. To those who don’t understand the appeal of the skill being pursued, this passion often comes across as obsession. This seems to often be the case with parents and their children. As parents, we should try to encourage, or at least indulge, our kid’s passions.

If you’re having trouble getting your hands around this idea, I’ll leave you with this question and answer from teen-ager Luke Jackson:

Q: When is an obsession not an obsession?
A: When it is about football.

How unfair is that?! It seems that our society fully accepts the fact that a lot of men and boys ‘eat, sleep and breathe’ football and people seem to think that if someone doesn’t, then they are not fully male. Stupid!

Girls are lucky enough to escape this football mania but I have noticed that teenage girls have to know almost every word of every song in the charts and who sang what and who is the fittest guy going, so I suppose an AS girl (or a non-AS one) that had interests other than that is likely to experience the same difficulties as a non-football crazy boy.

I am sure that if a parent went to a doctor and said that their teenage son wouldn’t shut up about football, they would laugh and tell them that it was perfectly normal. It seems as if we all have to be the same.

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1. Games are a form of fun. That gives us enjoyment and pleasure.
2. Games are form of play. That gives us intense and passionate involvement.
3. Games have rules. That gives us structure.
4. Games have goals. That gives us motivation.
5. Games are interactive. That gives us doing.
6. Games have outcomes and feedback. That gives us learning.
7. Games are adaptive. That gives us flow.
8. Games have win states. That gives us ego gratification.
9. Games have conflict/competition/challenge/opposition. That gives us adrenaline.
10. Games have problem solving. That sparks our creativity.
11. Games have interaction. That gives us social groups.
12. Games have representation and story. That gives us emotion.

Olivia and Kurt Bruner, on the other hand, see “complex” video games as an addiction waiting to happen. In fact, they point to the complexity of the games and the game developers’ attempts to engage us as a deliberate strategy by video game developers to get players addicted. Here are some key points from a section in the book titled Driving Forces of Game Addiction.

1. Beating the Game: The first driving force for game addition is the desire to finish, in part due to the satisfaction of completion or simple pride – wanting to beat the game.
2. Competition: Allowing people to interact with each other puts the game in the hands of the players, rather than the game programmer…. Creating a game with flexible rules allows players to develop their own playing styles, moves, and tactics.
3. Mastery: The desire to master a game is also potentially addictive…. Programmers are encouraged to give players enough “feedback” from the game so that they can learn to master it, drawing them back over and over again.
4. Exploration: The addiction of exploration has been part of computer games since the beginning. In fact, some of the first games were entirely about exploration. The wildly popular game Myst, for example, used exploration as its basis, capitalizing on the strong urge to explore interesting places or uncover secret levels.
5. The High Score: Players spend countless hours playing video games simply to beat a competitor’s high score – even if that “competitor” is one’s own last game!
6. Story-Driven Role Play: Designing the game to the script of a story will compel players to finish, to see how the story ends…. The harder it is to finish the quest or story, the more likely the game will feed addiction. This is why more and more games are designed with a story foundation and with increased level complexity.
7. Relationships: Many video and Internet games are designed to create an odd type of peer pressure in which players rely upon each other for support. Such games also leverage the draw of artificial relationships, allowing players to build “friendships” with people they would not otherwise meet or even like. Thanks to anonymity, people feel more open talking about personal issues online without fear of judgments they might face from real-life friends and family.

To Prensky, video games are a passion that can lead to positive learning and skills, such as this story about 10-year-old Tyler. For the Bruners, video games are an obsession that lead to destroyed lives, expressed in the several examples they describe several in their book and on their website.

In Part 3: Recommendations for parents

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Some see video games as the learning tool of the future, an example of how technology can be used to engage our kids. Others see video games as a harmful obsession that leads to addiction and a wasted life.

Over the past several weeks, I’ve read two books concerning these topics: Prensky’s Don’t Bother Me Mom, I’m Learning! and Playstation Nation by Olivia and Kurt Bruner. I’ve also had a chance to take a look at the writings on the authors’ respective websites: Marc Prensky.com and VideoGameTrouble.org. Though these authors say basically the same thing about the nature and design of video games, the conclusions they reach could not be any more different from each other.

In his book (and on his website), Prensky makes a distinction between the triviality of the “mini-games” of the past and the complexity of modern video games.

Almost all the pre-computer games were card or board games. (I am excepting physical games and sports, which have remained the same pre and post computer – except for their strategies.) The pre-computer games typically took no more than an hour or two to play (and often less.) With only a few exceptions such as Bridge, Chess and Go – which were played seriously by relatively few – games of the pre-computer era gave kids very little to reflect on or learn at a deep, or thoughtful level. Sure, kids may have learned a few economic lessons from Monopoly, but games, back then, were mostly games. Distractions, if you will.

What makes a “complex” game different from a mini-game is that a complex game requires a player to learn a wide variety of often new and difficult skills and strategies, and to master these skills and strategies by advancing through dozens of ever-harder “levels.” Doing this often requires both outside research and collaboration with others while playing. (Is this starting to sound like something that might work in education?)

The “levels” in a complex game may consist of building bigger, more complex cities or civilizations (e.g. Sim City, Civilization III, Rise of Nations), conducting harder and more challenging campaigns (e.g. Age of Empires, Age of Kings), confronting harder and more challenging enemies (e.g. Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings), solving harder and more challenging puzzles (e.g. Myst, Riven), completing more and more challenging quests (e.g. EverQuest, City of Heroes, World of Warcraft) or meeting other challenges of increasing subtlety and complexity.

In part 2: Attributes of games and game design and the different conclusions drawn by Prensky and the Bruners.

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As the parent of two teen-age boys I can tell you that nothing else I’ve ever done has been more frightening, exhilarating, nerve-wracking, frustrating, enjoyable, or – ultimately – rewarding. If you are a parent, you know exactly what I mean. Talk about a series of plateaus with sudden jumps to higher levels; parenting has it built in. First there is infancy, then toddlers. Early childhood and adolescence (ack – puberty!!). The teen-age years. Adulthood. And eventually you have to learn how to be a parent without being a parent anymore.

As the parent of an autistic son, I also understand the unique challenges faced by parents of children with disabilities. One thing I’ve learned from my own experiences, and the experiences of other parents in a similar situation, is that when you are faced with this non-typical situation you are forced to really understand that situation in order to do your best. When you find yourself in a ‘normal,’ well-understood situation it is all to easy to let yourself run on autopilot. Autism doesn’t really allow for that.

I don’t intend to turn this into a blog about parenting, special-needs or otherwise, but as part of my overall study of mastery I can’t help but be drawn to some of the challenges faced by parents and the lessons we can learn from them that apply to all aspect of life. I will point you to some incredible writing and insights from different parents I know, as well as discuss some areas where I think parents today should take themselves off of autopilot and really dive-in to understand their kids and the place they are making for themselves in the 21st century.

For a look at some incredible daily writing about one mother’s life with an autistic child, check out Kristina Chew’s Autismland.

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