Thanks to Fatbrain Toys Partners in Play for sponsoring this post. All opinions are my own
There are days when my sons’ eyes start to glaze over from too many video games and I fantasize about going all mountain-cabin-Grizzly-Adams on them.
Then I get real and realize that I probably would find it just as hard, if not harder to pull the plug than they would. That bugs me too. What’s going on here?
I want my kids to play with the sort of stuff that I played with as a kid and I want to play with those things again, with them. I want us to play with toys we can touch. The sort of stuff where you squish something or build something or roll some dice and move some actual non virtual pieces, with your hands and not a plastic controller.
The worst part of having a child that is used to game play in the digital age is that initial moment where you hand them the non electronic toy and they stare a little blankly at you as they turn it over assessing the possibilities and looking for the on/off switch.
“Ummm…. ok. What do I do with that?”
This was my 6 year old son’s reaction to Squigz the first time he saw them.
He got that they were suction cups, he saw that you could build with them. But did they give his characters special powers or help defeat enemies? Nope.
Then we came up with this:
All it required was some low stick tape and a loose set of rules. The game went on for the rest of the day. The pieces stayed stuck to the door all weekend. Every time we walked by, we each took a swing at scoring. .
That’s what I’m talking about.
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