I Hope My Kid Becomes a Gamer

 I Hope My Kid Becomes a Gamer

The title is a little click-baity for two reasons:

1. I will support my kid in whatever endeavors he decides to pursue because I love him and respect that he is his own person.
2. I don't want him to only be one thing. But I do hope that one of the things he becomes is a gamer.

Why do I wish this? I was thinking about this as I was watching him in his little pre-school basketball class. Yesterday was easily his best class yet: he was having fun, he was enthusiastic, he was listening, he didn't give up on trying to dribble or shoot the ball...I was so very proud of how hard he persevered without betraying frustration. At least, until the second half of class. Then the wheels came off. But still! The best first half of class I've seen him pull off. I don't know if he'll want to be an athlete, but I hope he will, because he can learn so much from sports.

I believe the same is true of being a gamer. The best types of gamers are the ones who are creative problem-solvers. We're resourceful as we discover new, sometimes unexpected paths to success. We learn how to cooperate with other people to solve a puzzle or win a game, but we also learn how to compete against one another without making it personal. We play to win, but quickly learn that we will spend a lot of time losing and need to learn from those losses instead of pouting so we can come back and do better the next time we play.

I know that the designation of "gamer" most often evokes the following image:

Add a neckbeard and you can probably begin to smell the BO. I know I can...

And there are admittedly a lot of those. A lot. But there are so many great gamers out there who embody the traits I listed earlier, and those are traits I think we can all aspire to. I identify as a gamer because it's how I'm happy to spend so much of my free time. It's the hobby on which I spend most of my money, and playing games is absolutely how I prefer to spend time with most of my very best friends. I aspire to be one of the best kinds of gamers because I know the qualities that accompany such a designation are qualities I can not only use in everyday life, but because they are qualities I want to pass on to my son, regardless of who or what he grows up to be.

So why is it that I hope my kiddo becomes a gamer? It's true that I'd like to see him embody a lot of the best characteristics of gamers that I listed above. It's important to me that he learn those things because I think they will help him immensely. But in the end, I hope he becomes a gamer for the most selfish reason: it'll give me that much more time with him doing something it turns out we both enjoy.