I’m not really a Pokemon person but the new Pokemon game Pokopia (for Nintendo Switch 2) is SO sweet, gentle, and filled with many opportunities to talk about life skills.
One that I noticed and really surprised me, is consent. Yep, consent.
I noticed that a lot of the interactions you have with Pokemon in the game are asking how they are, what they need, and offering them things. Pokemon offer you things in return, and accept or decline offers. None of them apologize for saying no, none force you or other Pokemon to do something they don’t want to.
Consent can be tricky to discuss with kids, especially kids who are “too young” to be encountering consent in relationships. And when we try to discuss consent it can feel like. heavy topic, and kids can shut down.
So, instead, meet them where they’re at. In the video you can see how I address conversations about consent simply based on what the characters said in the game.
What if you don’t play Pokemon? Neither do I! You don’t need to “know” who every character is, you don’t need to know what all the words mean. It’s actually an advantage that you don’t! Ignore the words you don’t know, and focus on the themes you see, like if a character asks another if they’re ok with something, or if a character does NOT listen to another.
We can talk about consent simply by asking questions like “why are they asking that?” or “are they listening to the other person? How can you tell?” or “if someone asked you that/spoke to you that way, how would it make you feel?” And then talk about a situation you might see that apply to in the rest of your child’s life.
Do you have other do this every day? No! If you can find a few minutes every now and then, you can connect based on their interests and also show how the skills and topics that come up in leisure activities can improve and inform the rest of our lives.
