Stu and I have often pondered on if we let Zak play it for as long as he wanted in a day, whether he would actually do anything else at all. The jury's out, but I reckon he would probably only stop a few times to eat.
We try to responsibly-parent when it comes to the iPad. They have to share, they are only allowed on it for a certain amount of time, before breakfast and after tea, and if it causes arguments it goes off. For a spontaneous Saturday-afternoon-shag those rules do however get occasionally broken.
The current game of choice is the intellectually named, 'Plant Vs. Zombies'. It does what it says on the tin. My latest issue has arrived in the fact that Stuart seems as zombified by the bloody game as the boys. In the kitchen the other day, I heard an argument starting over the iPad and entered the lounge ready to let heads roll when in fact I discovered that it was 'Daddy' who wasn't sharing. Seriously, what hope do they have? ;-) As I type this Stu is busily blasting zombies with overgrown virtual cabbages and I don't expect any conversation for the rest of the evening. At least it means that he is the one that will eagerly converse about the silly game with the children.
There are a million studies out about how gaming rewires developing children's brains. Nobody can agree on how much is too much though, I guess that varies from child to child. I would like to think that my two are not into the danger zone but it does worry me how addicted Zak is to anything technological. He passed the iPad to Stu the other day and couldn't walk straight out of the room without physically swerving past it on the way out. At least I'll recognise the signs of dependency in him if I ever need to at later stages in his life!
When you ask Zak what he wants to do when he grows up he says that he wants to play the iPad all day. I translate this to people as "he wants to be a computer programmer, how clever!"; but I'm blatantly lying. He is a delightful child: polite, considerate, conversational, articulate and intelligent. It is however, all a complete façade. He is really wishing we would piss off and leave him zapping cacti to his little heart's content. The look of horror on his face when he saw my Mum with her newly acquired iPad the other day and she told him that there weren't any games on it. "But Granny, that is SUCH a waste!" Just imagine, someone owning their own iPad that they can play on any time they want to, with no restrictions, and them not availing themselves of it! Utterly bonkers.
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