Computer games V old fashioned games.

Ozzy had a school friend round for tea tonight, its one he see's fairly regularly and one I always look forward to. I look forward to D coming because despite Ozzy and D being 7 year old tech heads, when the pair of them are together they regress... I don't mean to babies or anything strange! ...but they regress to the 1970's/80's, or rather maybe I do in watching them!

Tonight they got all of Ozzy's cuddly toys out and D brought some of his own and they played for just under 2 hours... I heard not one single bleep of an i pod, or whoosh of a skylander.  

I'm not one to ban the techy side of life, to me thats denial of reality. Like it or not, this is a fast moving technical world and its here to stay, so I think you may as well get on board... I mean what if Mark Zuckerburg had been denied computer access?! ...But then again I have to say tonight's play session really made me think twice.

There was no hint of a squabble, no arguing over who gets to be the "Purple Sparkle Cynder' Skylander... no "MMmuuummmmmy???" every 5 minutes because firefox has crashed, or wifi's down, or Moshi Monsters doesn't recognise his password!  It was positive bliss... In fact so wonderfully harmonious, that I even got to dip into my favourite guilty pleasure 'The Real Housewives of New York/OC/Beverly Hills!' Yay!

They used their imaginations, ran around the house and laughed endlessly. It actually reminded my of how I used to play with my friends, in a time before computers/ mobile phones and even donkey kong! (God I am old!!)  We used to skip, play tennis, play James Bond, ride bikes, hoola hoop and rarely veg infront of even a TV screen (in fairness TV was crap then!).

I also had a fairly accurate idea of things I could and couldn't do by the time I was 7, my son doesn't, because of wii.  He genuinely thinks he can ski, play archery and is an ace at tennis, because he can do it on wii.  He has no concept that that skill of flicking a wii remote and leaping about on a board, bears no relation to the real life game. 

Gloves 1, WII 0

So I must say that watching Ozzy and D literally cry with laughter made me wonder if the parents that I have in the past been a bit sniffy about, who are reluctant to allow techy stuff in the house, may actually have a  good point... after all would I be who I am now without all that real play?  
Seeing the children tonight have so much fun, playing in a way children have always played throughtout all time, forces me to question my own beliefs. .
..What I mean is, if your idea of a good time had been to play Skylanders/WII/DS what would you be like now?  If instead of actually inventing, drawing, hiding, acting, running, riding and as a consequence laughing... would you be still be you?