Your Parenting Info

I’m not a big fan of video games. In general, they are counter to socialization and imagination. They’re borderline addictive. I’ve seen kids get so wrapped up in Halo that they lost all sense of time and what was going on around them.

And so I was less than enthusiastic when my sister gave her favorite nephews a Wii for Christmas.  As far as video games go, this thing is fantastic.  This is not like other game systems that involve only staring at a screen while flailing one’s thumbs at super-sonic speed.

The Wii is the video game system for a family.  The difference is the motion sensor technology in the Wii.  Most Wii games, at least the few that we’ve got, are not to be played from the couch.  You jump around – dodging, thrusting, throwing.  This is the most activity that our living room has seen since the famous Rowe Family Beach Ball Volley of 2009.

In the last few weeks, I’ve been beaten by my nine year old at bowling, fencing, hurdling, air hockey, skeet shooting, car racing, golf, and table tennis.  It may not be full-on aerobic exercise, but it certainly beats sitting on the couch moving only our thumbs.

There are even semi-educational games that our three year old can play on his own.  One of my favorite features is that the system gives you a daily usage summary, so we can keep track of how long the boys play down to the minute.

The only real negative about the Wii is the expense.  The top games run a staggering $50 a piece.  Even the cheapy games run about twenty bucks a pop at Wal-Mart.  Fortunately, each game comes with quite a few variations, so that it doesn’t get old or repetitive quickly.

If your children have badgered you into considering a video game system, I’d recommend the Wii highly.  One word of advice from personal experience – don’t play golf wearing socks while standing on a hardwood floor.  If you do, you may fall down and add a new word to your vocabulary: winjury.