(One hour of child observation) Can parents connect with their children through video games?

Earlier this afternoon, I was taking the subway to class and I saw a father and son both playing their Nintendo DS together. Before this I had never seen a parent playing Nintendo with their child. I had only seen parents give their kids the Nintendo to keep them entertained and to have a moment of peace. While I hadn't seen it before, this interaction made a lot of sense to me. My parents and grandparents don't play video games, however, people of my generation are now having children. Now gamers are raising gamers. For me, there was some charm to witnessing this sight. In this case, this boy wasn't being left alone in his room to play his video games. He was interacting with his father and they were having a discussion about how to successfully conquer the challenge. When the child needed help to get to the next level, his dad would show him how to win. The father wasn't just beating the levels for his son, but he was taking time to show him what buttons he needed to push to do a specific move to beat his opponent. The whole reason this amazed me is because both of them were interacting with each other while playing their games. They were not silent and the child wasn't angry that his father was talking to him. They both enjoyed each others presence.

Thinking as an educator, I wish I would have seen this father reading a book with his child or helping him play an educational video game. From observing them, I can safely say that these two weren't playing an educational game. These two were aggressively pushing their game controllers and making sounds like, "uhh, yeah, get em, shoot him, and ...get it!! That's an extra life!" These two were entertaining themselves and I don't think there's anything wrong with that. Their games may be violent, but so is the media and the images that surround the world that our children live in. Part of the reason video games aren't healthy for children is because they cut children off from playing outside and socializing with others. Until now, most parents were "too old" or just not interested in playing video games. I always saw video games as something that seperated children from their parents. Nowadays, a child may just sit in the basement and play video games all day, whereas when I grew up it was normal for father and son to go outside and play some ball. What made me think to write this journal was that it really made me feel good to see these two interacting while doing something so separate from each other. I thought this was important because I had never previously acknowledged how eventually parents, grandparents, and their children will all be playing video games together and interacting as a family. That might be a bit of a stretch. Ultimately we can't stop the production of this media and video games are going to develop whether we like it or not, but what people can do is play together and find friendship in shared interests instead of isolating themselves and not being able to share their memories with anyone else.