When Ron Stanley, a guest writer for The Washington Post, wrote an article reminiscing a time his nieces and nephews were banned from playing a video game or watching television, it was what the children did next that was surprisingly heartwarming.
As he spoke of his six-year-old nephew trying to finish his homework while the others played, it reminded me of the time when I was fifth grader struggling with math, distracted by my brothers playing Pong on the Atari 2600 in the next room. I wanted to play so bad. I could hear the joyful bleeps and my brothers madly twirling the paddles almost to a breaking point. So I can totally feel for the six-year-old described in Stanley’s article.
But the story wasn’t about the struggling six-year-old trying to finish his homework. It was about the writer’s nieces and nephews trying to find a way to entertain themselves without any form of entertainment.
“… we were left with his collection of miniature cars, stuffed animals and action figures,” Stanely wrote. It was a delightful read as the toys took on a life of their own in his nephews hands. ” What struck me was how much my nephew’s play — when he had no access to a video game — took on the format and rules of a computer game. One of the first toys he picked up was a four-inch-high, hard-plastic figure of Venom, Spider-Man’s evil doppelganger, with an unusually large head. In reality, maybe it was Baby Venom, or a Venom candy dispenser with an enormous skull to hold the gumballs. In my nephew’s imagination, it was the boss of Level 1.”
As each nephew joined in, the writer describes how the imagination went wild from a computer game rule to a video game rule as each nephew and nieces took on their own character persona as they played their new game. A sort of lost art that a majority of our youth seemed to have lost touch with. Their imagination.
There’s a lot that can be learned reading this article and hope is not lost in the matrix, we still have imaginations. In so many words, the article asks its readers who said playing a video game required a television and a console to enjoy.
“There was no evidence that television and video games had stifled the kids’ creativity. Nor was there any evidence that technology had made them smarter than earlier generations. They simply had a different frame of reference, one that included video games and computers as well as ponies, pet stores and sword fights,” wrote Stanley.
It was comical as well as heartwarming to continue reading as the children seemed to have turned a card table into a horse stable and so on. I had a fit of laughter reading about how his genius nieces and nephews re-created and improved their video games for their live play and how Stanley explained the thought process behind their creativity.
“Children who play lots of card games will invent their own card games. Children who play lots of board games will invent their own board games. And children who play lots of video games will invent their own video-game-like games when they don’t have access to the game controllers,” he wrote ending a great story.
Read [The Washington Post]
Lucy,
This is a really cool article. I think it speaks to how creativity is an innate thing, and that creative people can transfer their experiences from one medium (playing video games with the controller and TV) to another (playing video games with figurines).
Additionally, while I'm not a child psychologist, I wonder if this also points out an interesting contradiction: On the one hand, video games seem to have helped these kids organize their play around a story or sequence, much in the same way that I remember books, songs, and movies helping me organize my play when I was a child. Yet, at the same time, the video-game-like organization, which is simple and linear, may be more limiting than the more complex stories children may encounter in other mediums.
Clint
Clint,
A very interesting point. I think it also nullifies the theory that video games are pure mind rot for children. These children definiately did not lack imaginiation, motivation or willingness to explore.
It's funny my boyfriend and I was having this same discussion while talking about (albiet an unrelated subject) going to a movie screening of Brats: Our Journey Home and how we discussed that we shared some of the experiences the people interviewed in the movie did when out of the blue a woman stood up and screamed how this was proof that the Army taught violence to their children.
It's totally untrue. Though I've had many punishments growing up I never turned out to be a violent person or an expert gunner. Okay. I can actually shoot pretty well, in fact better than most of the Soldiers I used to work with, but it wasn't through growing up learning about it or playing a video game. It was the willingness to ask questions and learning about them through books or asking experts. I must say my brothers and I had great imaginations as children.
Most children are creative if given a chance to explore their imaginations. But that can disappear if we constantly plug them up to the digital babysitter or neglect the interacting with them on a regular basis. (I.e, only letting them play their game after they've finished their homework for an hour then spend the rest of the evening before bed talking, watching a movie or playing a game together.)