Shocking news everyone: Dads like to play video games with their kids!

This AP story quotes a survey from last year showing that 35% of parents play video games, and that 80% of those game with their kids. Even more shockingly, both dads and moms are gaming. Moms? Gaming? Are you crazy?

I know, I shouldn't be so hard on them -- the mainstream takes a while to catch on to these simple facts. I expect that the percentage of parents (and grandparents) playing games with their kids will only rise with the release of family-friendly gaming systems like the Wii.

The quote in this article about games as a gateway into a kid's world is a good one -- video games can and do provide a leveling effect because lets face it, their reflexes are way better than ours (as we discovered a few years ago when Erilar's son beat the crap out of all of us playing Virtua Fighter -- he didn't know what he was doing, but man could he ever mash buttons).

I disagree with this paraphrase attributed to Dr. Arminta Jacobson, director of the Center for Parent Education at the University of North Texas:

But Jacobson also warned that limits are necessary because video games don't encourage reflective thinking skills, language development, social skills or physical activity.

This may be true of standard button mashing games, but I think the next generation of sandbox games does encourage all of these things, save perhaps physical activity (and heck, maybe even that when Animal Crossing is released for Wii). It's been amazing to watch my daughter Jordan play with Animal Crossing and Nintendogs over the last year or so -- she started off simply moving her characters through the virtual worlds, but now she's begun exploring them, discovering new tricks (such as designing and using patterns in Animal Crossing or using the voice recorder in Nintendogs to play her own silly games) and interacting with the various characters there.

Don't get me wrong -- none of this replaces the value of real-world experience and social interaction, but I think there's more to it than some might think. In any case, I think the advice regarding walking, reading, and just straight-out playing with your kids is good, though in my experience the dads who are involved enough to play video games with their kids are already doing all of that. It's an extension of their parenting skills, not a replacement.