Video Games AHHHHHHHHHHHH

[Unregistered]

I am at wits end with the group of children I have now. In over 15 years of child care, I have never had issues like I have had lately. I have 4, 4 year olds that are constantly acting out video games they play at home. We do not play video games here at all. My opinion is that children this age don't need to play them! This all they do at home and the play has gotten to the point of pushing and shooting at each other. They are not trying to be violent, but agin, acting out a game they play every day at home.

Any advice on how to deal with this? I have little ones as well, and am afraid someone will get hurt with the rough housing. I have talked to each parent about it, but they see no harm in video games at this age!

Help!!!

[countrymom]

I have one 6 yr old that lives in mario world (I think he's autistic too) he now lives in pokemon world but his parents let him play. Another plays the violent games on xbox that I spend my day telling him that we dont' play games like this. Other boy loves to shoot things because on the wii, mom him a gun and he's 3.5 yrs old. My kids have never acted out games these kids, its scarey, no word of advice just that its happening here.

[NiciMeyers84]

Is it possible to organize a group game that they can play together? I used to care for 3 year old and 5 year old that play-acted with guns. We would just change up the game to discourage rough-housing and added new rules that gave points to those who didn't play-act shooting. Eventually, they forgot about the guns and fighting and wanted to play by the new rules.

[Preschool/daycare teacher]

I've seen what you're talking about. We have a 5 yr old who lives in video game world. It's at the point that he doesn't even know how to play with the other children. He'll start playing with them, and then somehow immediately end up re-enacting video games while they're still playing something else. Or he will incorporate what they're playing into his video game world and act it out, talking about some video game character or other and asking "Did you see that? He did x and x." and everyone's sitting there wondering who he's talking about it. But it's so real to him he thinks we should know what he's talking about. He also has extremely poor small muscle skills in his hands and poor eye-hand coordination. To the extreme that he can't even pull his pants up by himself because he has no strength. He even has trouble manipulating a glue stick and misjudges where an object is while trying to reach for it with his hand. But to mention these "symptoms" to mom, she looks at me like I'm crazy to be worried about it. He goes to Kindergarten this fall and won't be able to do anything for himself at this rate! ...But yet people want to say there's nothing wrong with video game use by young children. I know exactly what you mean, OP. I wish, like you, that I knew what we could do for the children so severely affected by video games. But when parents don't want to hear about the effects, there's nothing more we can do, that I know of I try working with this little boy on the days he's with us, but he only attends 2-3 days a week and it's hard to hold his interest (He's easily distracted...)

[PitterPatter]

I give the SA game players active games to play. We play a lot of the "Whats on my head" game where they have to act out the animal or sport etc. (charades basically) We play hopscotch for points. Whoever has the most points at the end of the day gets to choose the 1st game the next day. I let them build forts in the dining room on Fridays they have to use the buckets of firemen and cops etc tho not attack each other.

hth

[LittleD]

My school agers went through a phase this summer, where they would all be super mario characters. I didn't see anything wrong with it.
!. They were doing active play (running, climbing and jumping-no violence)
2. They were interacting WITH each other
3. They were coming up with problems and acting out how to solve them

I think kids will fixate on anything that interests them. Video game or Tv show characters are just another (newer) thing to fixate on. Back in the 50's (I believe) Howdy Doody was the big thing and kids were running around pretending to be characters form there.

Just make sure that the character they are fixating on has adventures that are built around your rules (If it's a villain, turn him into a good guy) I can't see the original post to confirm what the problem was, but I don't see a big deal with it.