Best habits for kids – Video Games, Books or Both

“Come on shutdown the game, keep the phone down, get away from iPad,…..” or “Go out and play, do some physical activity, study, do home work, read a book….” these are the normal phrases we keep hearing in a house with kids. Trying to make them to build good habits or study and usually to keep them away from video games 🙂 I like to share my perspective of good vs bad habits, and what or how we need to encourage kids to do which can help them going forward.

Video Games, let’s start with the main habit which is most common among kids especially with age 8+. As per one of the study in 2011 almost 91% of kids play video games and 2021 stats show how the gaming addictions are causing gaming disorders. But I want to just to discuss how we can make gaming a better habit which helps children to learn and explore different aspects of life like competitiveness, imagination, strategies, logical thinking, creativity and so on. The main aspect of making it a good habit is to teach your kid on when and how to control the time spent on playing these games. Once you have control on that and make sure that you are not carried away and spending lot more time on just gaming, you will see positive and good development in kids growth from gaming. Controlling is something every human needs to practice because we get carried away or obsessed with short time happiness and try to make it an addiction. So if we can teach our kids to control and let them understand the benefits from it, they can achieve many things in life. We need to make them understand what to learn, how to interpret the situations and not get conveyed certain things are good in real life.

We have different genres of games and each provide some kind of development skill which can help kids. Racing games help them to be competitive and achieve that desire to be always best. Action games help them to get exposed to defend themselves, strategy games help to think logically, and build strategies using your creative thinking and imaginations. Puzzles help them to solve problems easily and faster as they make their brain work faster and similarly more and more genres. But we also need to make sure kids are not going over with certain aspects, like too much competitiveness is also not good or take racing to real life and do rash driving, it is not good to take the fantasy or reel life to real life. That is something has to be taught to kids on how the games have to be treated as fiction and just extract the things that can be used in real life. Similarly playing action or games involving violence should not influence kids to take that path, instead extract only positive or competitiveness of the game. Again this comes to how controlling emotions can help achieve things in life. That is what we need to teach our kids controlling emotions, extraction of positive and good aspects and use it in real life. So please don’t discourage kids to play video games, just teach them how to get best of it and not get addicted to it.

Books, this is the best habit that has to be included in every kids life. There are plenty of quotes from great people about reading and books, but below from Dr. Seuss tells how reading can educate you and take places.

“The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn, the more places you’ll go.” ― Dr. Seuss

Books should be part of every kids life, and should continue as they grow and should never end in anyone’s life. Reading books is the habit that has to be carried until end of our life. Books has the power to teach, things that no one in our life’s can teach. There are billions and billions of books, which provide enormous knowledge. Reading brings out the imaginative power from kids as there is no visualization and it makes them to visualize and dive into the character or situation they are reading and makes them to be more intuitive and creative about the imagination itself. It helps to learn things which can range from things happening near to us or far far away in any part of the world or even different universe.

The amount of knowledge books can provide is unlimited, we can learn about different cultures, societies, people, wars, friendships, love, hatred, real life stories, social, political, comedy, fantasies, fictions and autobiographies of great and inspiring people, and the list goes on. We can go to different worlds, universe, our own imagination is the limit on how we read and imagine. We can live the life from past, understand, experience, learn and same way live the life in future in some of the fantasy or fiction books, which may be a reality in future. So considering all these I believe reading has to be introduced and induced to kids daily activities if not as much as possible and make them to read different genres and explore the enormous knowledge available.

Technology has emerged so much now, eBooks and audiobooks are so common that traditional paperbacks or hardcovers are very rare unless you want an autographed copy :). Audiobooks provide a way for us to be closer to books by not dedicating specific time to read, we can easily listen to book and perform other activities without complaining about not having time. So kids or even adults who complain about reading a book takes time, can use audio books.

Legos is another habit I think every kid has to have and I believe it will be the favorite toy to most kids. They are the perfect tools which can help kids while growing. It can be motor skills, creativity, innovation, inspiration, and lot of fun. Building or playing with legos has infinite options because there is no limitation in imagination and creativity. Variety of blocks that can be arranged as per your imagination, so it is unlimited. So, please make sure to introduce Legos to your kids and also you can explore too as it is a relaxing acitivity which can make wonders to adults. I like to post Legos as separate topic and explore more and share how it has wide variety of benefits and fun it can bring, because it is for kids and adults.

Finally, Video Games, Legos and Books are great source of learning materials for kids. Books being the important source to gain knowledge about past, present, future and anything. Video games provides that experience of learning emotions required to be part of society and also enhances creative and problem solving thinking. Legos help them to be creative and innovative. So please direct your kids to make use of these tools to enhance their lives and in a way enhancing the whole society.

Personally I like racing, strategy and puzzles in games and fiction, autobiographies, some of fantasies and self inspiring books. I build legos no favorites there, I do like cars, star wars, marvel and so on. Would like to hear suggestions, so I can try new things.

Please feel free to provide your feedback in comments section and also share any experiences or thoughts about kids habits.