Wish your kiddos wanted to do things besides using screens?

Try this unusual strategy

📚Story time-

I like hiking, but it took me a long time to learn to like it. I now really enjoy summit hiking in high elevation, and do you know why?

🤯Because of Zelda Breath of the Wild.

💪🏼I felt accomplished in BOTW when I climed a mountain; I knew it wasn’t hte same as actually climbing one but it still took strategy, and it made me wnat to try to climb one in real life.

🤯It was BECAUSE of the connection to video games that I knew I even liked the idea of climbing a mountain.

🧠Imagine I was hiking and exclaimed “whoa it looks just like the lakes in Zelda” and someone said “why aren’t you appreciating this for what it is? Stop talking about Zelda, it’s not even real”. This is a trap we fall into when we view screen interests as the enemy of other interests. They’re not. They can dovetail and support each other.

🔥When we connect with kids through their interests we are showing that we care about them AND we are going to help them pivot their interests to real life.

🤔Now if I had said “I don’t need to go on a hike because I can just play Zelda” it would be reasonable to say “doing something in real life might be different- let’s find out!”

🎤Harnessing the screen interest means we can use it, instead of resenting it.