Things that bug me about "stuff for parents and kids"

So I have a toddler. He's great.

While I read about being a parent and find things for him to do, there's a few things that really annoy me.

1) Parents who seem to be utterly terrified about being parents. Are there terrifying and frustrating moments? Sure. But there seems to be this whole culture of fear that some people subscribe too. I still remember, working in highschool as a $5.75 computer rep at officemax. One of the managers was a new parent, and he just exuded being terrified about making sure that his kid didn't see or have anything remotely capable of causing any sort of possible psychological harm to his kid. I read http://www.howtobeadad.com and, while it's funny, they launch into this same sort of fraidyness sometimes which really, really bugs me. Am I coldhearted for accepting that I accept that I will not be able to protect my 2-year old from everything for ever?

2) Crappy entertainment for kids. Perhaps this is just the kid-version of the fact that 90% of everything is crap, but especially on Youtube, man, what shite.

3) Yahoo Answers.

No. You're ahead of the curve.

Ugh, no. It is not just the kid version of 90% of everything being crap, because most of the stuff that is made for kids isn't just crap, it is SO AWFUL CRAP. It's shameful some of the stuff that gets foisted on kids just because they don't know any better. Ever see Dora the Explorer? One of the most successful kids' shows in recent years, yet 90% of each episode is reused animation, it's clear that no thought whatsoever goes into the writing, and the wizards who invented it included the genius hook of throwing a mouse pointer on the screen every now and again to simulate a crappy edutainment game.

Speaking of edutainment games for kids, ever play any? Well don't bother trying, because they won't run on your computer if it was built this decade. Ok, it's not across the board, but since so many of them are just re-skins of re-skins of re-skins of old games from the nineties or early oughts, lots of new ones won't run on Windows Vista or 7, some won't run on XP, and a startling (i.e. nonzero) of them have that old bug where it thinks you don't have enough ram because it requires 16 megs and you have over a gig. I feel a little bad making fun because kids do enjoy them in the end, but seriously guys, you can do a little better than this at least.

I like it because it tells me with one hundred percent certainty what the wrong answer to any given question is. It's a great reference if you know how to use it!

4: So people are like "you should get a LeapPad for your son!" And I see a shitty overpriced device with shitty expensive games and think Ill just buy a hard case for an old iPad or iPhone and everyone will be happier.

I haven't been a kid since the 90s so I don't know what the current state of children's gaming is, but the 90s was a golden age. The Learning Company absolutely pumped out games that I loved. Treasure Mountain, Gizmos and Gadgets, and Mission: THINK are games that come to mind, though I'm probably seeing them through glasses that are so pink they're practically opaque. Sierra's Lion is another good one. I wrote a report in grade 2 on lions and my teacher was so impressed by it she told my mom all about it. My mom didn't have the heart to tell her that all my knowledge came from a video game.

EDIT: I want to go back to the time in my life where I could play Gizmos and Gadgets and have the time of my life :(

Don't know about those since I was a kid in the eighties but they seem like real games, which we also had when I was a kid. What it mostly is these days is games that are licensed from kids' shows/movies/books. Hence the re-skinning.

I fucking loved Number Munchers back when I was a kid.

But yeah, the current state of children's gaming appears to be a cesspool. I mean, I get the fact that concepts need to be dumbed down a bit for children, as they don't always comprehend certain things. That said, some of the games that have come out for kids recently seem to go beyond that, in that it's surprising the developers believe kids are actually capable of thought.

<3 <3 <3

On the plus side, if those kids grow up and get jobs where all they have to do is identify the same five objects over and over again, they're going to be brilliant at it.

I remember the games I played as a kid. They were even educational sometimes!

Let's Explore: Buzzy Goes to the (location) was a fun series for kid-me. We had "Farm" and "Airport," and a demo for "Jungle." There were also partner games featuring different characters, Putt Putt and Freddie Fish (which we didn't have any of).

I also remember the original Kid Pix for Macs. Also hours and hours and hours of fun, without much "blatant" education about it (but fostering artistic abilities and creativity can't be that bad, right?)

And then there was SkiFree. I don't like to talk about it >_>

Fuck SkiFree. Goddamn Yeti always eating me... fuck that Yeti.

Now Chip's Challenge... that was a fun game.

Rodent's Revenge! It teaches problem-solving skills and logic and critical thinking.

Putt Putt! I LOVED PUTT PUTT! And Pajama Sam! I didn't get to play all of them when I was a kid so I'm sad that I can't enjoy them now that I'm older. :(

There was also this incredibly strange (educational) adventure game called Guardians of the Greenwood... loved it but sadly I can't find the disk anymore.

Did anybody else try Purple Moon's Rockett's Tricky Decision and the rest of the Rockett series? Always thought it was a shame that the company fell apart later on. Apparently they were criticized for making games for girls because they were implying that girls would never be interested in your stereotypical action video game or something? As a kid I found it really fun though.

Other classic games I played when I was a kid: Jill Goes Underground, Spooky Castle: Kid Mystic, and the games that came with the windows 95 disc (Hover!, Hellbender, and the game where you have actors and can make movies).

...although I was in my 20's when that came out.

YESSSS I LOVED THAT GAME

(also the image is broked)

Clearly, Talisker wanted to recall another nostalgic memory of 90's computer use... images not loading due to really slow connection speeds.

You people are making me feel old.

Image is fixt.

Oh FUCK YES! Sadly, I never got to play that as much as I'd have liked to.

As a dad and sometimes game reviewer I get assigned a lot of the 'games for kids' deals and can only mirror what Extarbags is saying - if 90% of everything is crap, then it's 99% when it's marketed for kids, who have no critical taste at all or their parents, who more often than not have no clue (and instead of reading my reviews, they just buy whatever has their kids favourite character on it). It's rare that I give anything for kids more than four stars on our 1-6 scale.
It gets better, though. Older kids gets Lego games and a bunch of stuff... and the iPad is once again making an abundance of cheap learning games available, some are good. Of course it's even harder for clueless parents to search through all the crap to find them... and the crap is really crap only made to convince kids to buy ingame stuff or DLC.

Oooh! That's, like, that retro stuff, isn't it? That stuff is super cool. I love how the sounds are all fucked up & stuff.

Chicken. Fight like a robot.

You're all so fucking young. Here's what MY educational toys looked like:



Yeah, that's right. It was a FUCKING CALCULATOR. With an LED screen. And I LOVED IT. Today, giving a kid that would probably count as child abuse or something.

For proper childhood accuracy the LED screen should have 58008 on it and be rotated 180 degrees.

Yes, good plan, we got a LeapPad for 25% off when a local Best Buy was shutting down, and Rose likes it and has used it a lot, but for the price of a LeapPad and four games you can get a Nexus 7, which has some pretty good educational apps and then real games too, which all cost $1 or $2 instead of $24.99.

I would recommend against an iPod touch/iPad until they're older because when it shuts down from low battery the kid can just turn it right back on again and kill the battery. Also iOS make you keep apps on the home screens that the kid won't need and also won't let you lock down the home screens so the kid will long press and not be able to launch anything or just start piling icons randomly into folders.

Perfection.

Recommendations if you do get a Nexus:
Apex Launcher. This will let you lock the home screen to keep them from moving the icons around. It is not so hard to disable, but it requires a double tap and that seems to be a high enough barrier.

Monkey Math School Sunshine

Space Piano

Dr. Panda's Restaurant

Let's Create! Pottery

Color & Draw for Kids HD

Super Spelling

Kinectimals

Some puzzle games that are apparently very fun even if you can't get very far, but much farther than you would expect: Angry Birds Rio, Cut the Rope, Slice It, World of Goo

Also remember that if you buy an app and download it right away and try it, if it turns out to be crappy there's a 15 minute time window that you can just go back to the store page for the app and get a refund.

Dataman can calculate, but Dataman can't be fucking bothered to tell you the answer, you gotta figure that shit out for yourself. He'll let you know if you're right, though.

Also, I will DESTROY you at number guesser.

I'm all for buying Android to lock it down, which you can't do on iOS.

When that is said, if you don't want to buy a tablet just for the kid, my experience isn't that kids mess up or delete stuff. My youngest were 3 or 4 when I got the first iPad and it was never an issue. She needed help with some things and to start new apps in the beginning, but she never fucked anything up.
You also have the bigger AppStore (but I haven't done an app for app comparison on kids stuff - the downside is even more microtransaction crapware).

Well, you can actually set restrictions on iOS to keep apps from being deleted. You just can't set any to keep them from being moved. Which isn't a huge deal, as the kid knows where she's moved them.

The biggest problem is that you can turn iOS back on with a simple power button press after it's shut itself down to save the battery. This wrecks the battery really fast. Our iPod has about twenty minutes of battery life now, and there's a shitload of Apple tax on battery replacement. Android, you have to hold the power button down for three seconds, I think. However long you have to hold it down, it's long enough to make kids give up.

Oh yeah, and Android now lets you have multiple user accounts. It's kind of a hack, it warns you something about shared apps that I can't remember, but you can put a PIN on your account and have a simple swipe unlock on the kid's default account.

Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?

Number Munchers was the shit.

Okay, let me actually read the thread now.

That's what we did, and we thought ourselves very smart for doing so. Then the kid apparently lost it and we haven't seen it in months. :/ Though to be fair I place more of the blame for that on the stay at home parent as it happened when I was at work...

I love being a parent. It's a lot of fun.

My 12 year old son (we'll call him "Nate") slugged someone in the face on the bus yesterday. You have to understand Nate - he doesn't instigate anything. According to Nate (and I have no reason to doubt his word), the kid was poking him repeatedly and he had been warned multiple times by my son to keep his hands to himself. He decided to keep it up and even poked Nate in the glasses, so Nate finally just turned around and punched him in the nose once. That's all it took. The kid just sat there and cried and Nate did it so quickly that the bus driver never even noticed. No big fight, just one shot to end the bullshit.

So he tells my wife this story and she gets angry with him, but pulls the "wait until your father gets home" bit. So I come home and hear this. My reaction? "Good for you". No punishment - I just advised him to watch his back today in case the kid tried to sucker punch him. My wife was a bit put off as she thought we should tell him to go to the bus driver. I think that he's of the age that he has to demonstrate on occasion that he can take care of himself (which he can).

Now he knows that if he instigates something, he'll have to deal with me BIG TIME. But finishing what someone else started? That's just standing up for yourself and fuck what the school system says.

I couldn't agree more. My wife and I are in complete agreement with that philosophy as well.

Expanded version.



Not many people know this, but the early Bell Labs memo was born from an employee typing "531800837704" into a 12 digit calculator*. True story.

Edit: After a room full of blank stares, the employee then changed it to 531800807734, vowed to stay off the rum and then got his coat.

*Not a Hello Kitty one, as they weren't around in the early 70's, obviously.

Did you mean 531800807734?

Maybe, but most school systems have zero tolerance for any sort of fighting and usually will suspend both kids regardless who started it. Sounds like your kid got off lucky.

I told my kids that they have an absolute right to defend themselves if someone hits them and I will back them even if they get in trouble with the school. The problem is that gray area where it's not all out assault but maybe something less. I've seen plenty of kids fool around physically, not all of them deserved a punch in the face. You just have to hope your own kid reads the situation right. Sounds like he was justified especially after being poked in the face. I've heard horror stories of bullying on buses, but my kids get carpooled, so we don't have to deal with that at least.

Back on topic: Say what you will about the 'golden age of kid gaming' NOTHING beats an IOS device for kid use. "Hey kids, want to watch my new 65" inch Plasma 3D TV??", "No dad, we're playing "Ow My Balls".

Sounds bad. Can't say that I remember the last time any of our iPads ever ran out of battery (kid always calls out when the numbers get red... Well she's 7 now, so she just yells how many percent it's at), so it being turned on so often it ruins the battery is not a problem I'd ever consider worrying about.

Actually if it happened within the first two years, I'd try and use the consumer protection the EU gives me and have Apple change it. Doesn't seem like at defect I'd live with.

No you aren't. There are recent studies which convincingly show that coddling a child from every little tiny risk leads to distorted behavior later in life; for example never allowing children to climb the jungle gym results in more children having fear of heights. It reducdes both personal confidence, ability to socialize, and risk assessment decisions to treat a child like a Faberge Egg.

Caught this article a few days ago:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323622904578129063506832312.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

Some child-development experts and parents say decades of dumbed-down playgrounds, fueled by fears of litigation, concerns about injury and worrywart helicopter parents, have led to cookie-cutter equipment that offers little thrill. The result, they say, is that children are less compelled to play outside, potentially stunting emotional and physical development and exacerbating a nationwide epidemic of childhood obesity.

Some psychologists suggest that not exposing children to risk can result in increases in anxiety and other phobias. Children who never climb trees, for example, are more likely to develop a fear of heights, according to a study in Norway. And encouraging free play, in an age of structured activities and computer games, is believed to be important in helping children develop physical and cognitive competencies, creativity and self-worth.

"We don't give our children enough roaming space to help them test their limits or to help them become confident in their physical skills," says Kathryn Hirsh-Pasek, a professor in the department of psychology at Philadelphia's Temple University. "Sometimes when we protect people too much they never learn to take healthy risks."

Yup, helicoptering is scary. I run into it as a dog-owner nowadays, which is even more of a WTF.