When I was a little girl living on Kildeer Street in Oshawa, my best friend was Paula. She was one grade younger than me, but when she was in grade two and I was in grade three, the heavens smiled at us and plopped us into a split class together. She had to sit on one side of the room and I had to sit on the other side, but that didn’t matter because I could just look over and there she was. And we could walk to and from school together, across the field behind Eastdale Collegiate.
Paula and I made up all kinds of games to play together. One of our favourites was I Dream of Jeannie, because Paula somehow got hold of a real, live, Jeannie bottle. We took turns being Major Nelson and Jeannie, until one day I accidentally smashed the top of the jeannie bottle on our neighbour’s driveway and Paula went ape shit. She eventually forgave me.
We played other games, too. The kids in our neighbourhood put on a real live production of Disney’s Robin Hood in Paula’s back yard (which her mother called “the back garden”), complete with faux British accents and kissing cartoon foxes. Fortunately no adults were watching and if I didn’t blog about it, no one would be the wiser. Damn.
Anyway, Graham and I were over at Dad & Heather’s on the weekend and we discovered that Playing as we knew it, seems to be coming to an end. You see, Nintendo makes this little handheld computer thing (I forget what it’s called) and Jay & Jasmine each have one. The things can communicate with one another wirelessly. They both have the same game installed on it, called “Nintendog” and each player can manipulate a virtual pack of dogs on screen. One player can “send” an item to the other player’s unit. You can watch the dog lift its leg and take a pee on a virtual sidewalk. While I didn’t see any puppies humping on that screen, it wouldn’t surprise me. The girls can chat between units and when I say “chat” I mean “use a stilleto to enter letters on a screen and send them electronically”. They can do all of this without saying a word to each other. And one of these players is three. THREE. I turned to my dad and asked, “Can you imagine the kinds of things they’ll be able to do in twenty years?” He just shook his head.
In one way it’s pretty mind-blowing that these kids are able to use computers at such a young age (I recall a documentary about a two-year-old who could start up and run a Mac), but I think they might be missing out on some fun stuff, like smashing cheap yard sale ceramics on the driveway, or fighting over who gets to be Maid Marian. I hope kids continue to make time for real life Playing, no matter how freaky cool Nintendo gets.
I know what you mean. That is why it is important for parents to LIMIT the techno play. Cole loves the video games and the computer…that being said, he only gets 15 minutes of this kind of play a day. Riley loves TV. They get to watch TV before bed and a little bit in the morning if they are ready for the day in time.
The rest of the time they ARE Spy Kids, or Captain Jack and Will Turner, or Spiderman and Green Goblin. I find it funny that I actually have to call them these names to get their attention.
They paint, they play with their non-battery operated toys, etc. They still have some pretty cool things that we never had when we were kids, but if they had to choose between going outside to play in the backyard (read mudhole) or sit and watch TV, the mudhole would win every time.
Hee hee, it’s called a “stylus”!
And Nintendo DS Lite.
And yes, my son has one too and does all the above-mentioned.
But sometimes he does go outside and play for real, so not all hope is lost. Yet.
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