DH plays video games in front of kids - has become a spectator sport, is this normal?

[Dontlickthebin]

Perhaps better suited to chat than the MN gamer community, but I'll start here. DH plays a lot of Nintendo Switch. DS is 5 years old and starting to take an interest. So it's ended up becoming a spectator sport, where DS calls out what to do and DH will fulfil on screen. To be clear it's age appropriate games - Mario/Luigi etc, no violence or guns.

DH considers this quality time. DS is loving the screen time (obviously)

Is this normal? Do other families do the same? Don't want to stunt DS's development by exposure to video games too early and make him a dopamine seeker before junior school has even started.

Thanks for reading - all input welcome

Watching other people play and suggesting ideas etc has been part of my family time for over 30 years now. It's very normal.

Just make sure it's counted as screen time and set limits like everything else.

Lots of kids enjoy watching others play video games and it can be good for their puzzle solving skills.
I’d ask your h when (if?) he plans to let Ds use the controller because I don’t think it’ll be long until he asks and then the trouble could start.

How long is he playing and how often?

This was standard in my upbringing when we had an Acorn and a Spectrum. We would take turns.

Thanks - good to know there is a positive in there! It's around 1.5hrs per day, we try to limit screen time to 2hrs per day max unless DS is ill (and then anything goes)

I think it's fairly normal.
But I also think 1.5 hours a day is a lot

Totally normal in my house and now as adults they still sit with me and are my wingman

Totally normal here. DD used to watch me play games when she was little (age appropriate stuff), sometimes I'd give her a disconnected controller so she could "help control". Then she actually started playing with me. She's 18 now and we still play games together once a week or so, and we plan to continue online every so often once she's in uni.

Its been great for our relationship. She's not been the chattiest as a teen so along with going for a walk, gaming has been the time when I've gotten the most conversation out of her.

Its not made her screen addicted either. She games for an hour or so probably 4 or 5 times a week, she's not really one for TV either. Her phone is the bigger problem, but I accept that she's mostly talking to her friends on there and there's not much I can do about it now anyway.

my 5 year old plays the switch himself, Mario kart, Mario party, Lego party, Lego world, animal crossing. I’m surprised he is satisfied just watching and not playing it himself. I don’t see it as a problem thoug enjoying games at this age. IMO its better than them watching YouTube rubbish

I loved watching my (much older) big brother playing his Atari. He would have all his mates round and they all tolerated a 6 year old girl sitting on the bed with them. They let me have extra "lives" when we went outside to play rounders too. Great memories!

At age 5 surely they can play together?

Normal. One of our great holiday pleasures (DH is a teacher) is him playing (age appropriate) games with DSs. We also play board games, cards and watch films in various family combinations. DSs are 13 and 10 and can now more or less hold their own (and whoop me at MarioKart).

I agree - some of the stuff that the algorithm suggests on YouTube is utterly moronic!

@mrsbowes I think we are getting to that, DS is used to cartoons/YouTube. So far he sees it as something to entertain him rather than interact with.

@DelurkingAJ I think this is what I'd like to get to - the card games/dominoes x% of the time and then less time for video games... Every attempt I make to suggest dominoes etc gets the thumbs down! Whereas watching Luigi's Mansion gets complete engagement 😢

Yes get him playing games too,building worlds in Minecraft is far far better for him than watching you tube

Video games have limited benefit for developing deep problem-solving skills, they are not open-ended problems.

Due to the nature of the puzzles to solve, they can actually make genuine problems feel harder to deal with.

That's a lot of screen time at only 5.

You won’t get a spectrum of views in this area as it’s mostly going to be people who game. 1.5 hours screen time at this age, just watching someone play like this is nuts IMO. Half an
hour absolute maximum. Sounds like there can’t be much time for anything else after school except eating and gaming. How will your DS learn to entertain himself? It just sounds like an excuse for your DH to game as much as he wants.