As I sit here on a Friday night, a long week in work behind me. The weekend is just around the corner. What does that mean?
Well to some people it might mean massive sessions on Modern Warfare or Battlefield Bad Company 3 depending on your preference. A hermit lifestyle for the weekend, moving only for toilet breaks or refreshments. That’s how life used to be for me.
Now however I find myself the dad of twin boys, a full-time working dad of twin boys at that. The weekend when they were younger used to involve pulling silly faces making silly noises and watching Thomas the Tank Engine, now it consists of discussing who would win a fight between WWE wrestlers Seamus and The Rock (The Rock easily!). But recently they’ve also started touching my Nintendo DS and my Nintendo Wii, so I get a few minutes peace. Still no gaming time for me during the day though!
Let me share three things I’ve learnt from being a parent.
Time is a premium: Yes of course the time I spend with my kids is important, shaping their minds, imparting knowledge, but just as important is the time when they’re in bed. But what do I do when they’re in bed? To be honest I couldn’t tell you what I do, I think I just spend most of the evening on auto-pilot.
Never ever leave gadgets lying round within kids reach: (This was early on in their life) I got complacent, I left a PS3 controller out of reach but within sight of the kids, and what happened? Yes you guessed it… it broke. When did I find out? Just when I was about to relax in front of the TV and start Batman: Arkham Asylum. I wont go into too much detail as to how it broke, lets just say it involved a kids toy being dropped from a height. Sony replaced it and I eventually got to play my game. Another incident involved the kids, my PS3 (again) a matalan card and the PS3 cd lens. They ‘posted’ the matalan card into the PS3 which sat on top of the lens reader and therefore wouldn’t read any of the discs! After taking the PS3 apart I was relived I suppose to find out that it was just this and nothing sinister!
Try not to promise online meet up’s: Yeah that’s right, there have been times where I’ve arranged to meet up online and play some co-op action (MW spec ops anyone?) but once the kids are asleep and I’ve had tea the only thing I’ll be battling that night is the urge to have an early night.
Please understand, the above isn’t a rant nor a complaint, I love my wife and kids and wouldn’t change anything for what I’ve got today. In fact I can’t wait till the kids can actually start playing the consoles themselves (Supervised of course!).
More so recently I’ve found myself going back to my retro collection. Another SNES has been purchased, I’m raiding eBay like a mad man getting games for that, I’m now moving onto bolstering my Game Cube collection too. Something to be said for the solitude of the retro consoles, no Xbox live or psn to get distracted by. No gamerscore or trophies to hunt for.
Any way that’s my life as a gaming Dad, I’ll add I’ve amended this original blog while my kids have been playing on Mario Kart on the Wii, they’re getting quite good at it now (at the age of 5) even if I do have to tell them occasionally to back away from the TV.
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