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I just thought I would post this up as a new topic...an outgrowth from the left turn in the "How much sleep do you get?" thread. This can be a catch-all for any parent-kid related topic you want to talk about. 'Owning' children (sheah, right! Being owned by children...)is not a prerequisite.
I've got two little imps (actally, more like quasits...they lean toward the Chaotic side), Lexi is 3 1/2years old; and Corbin is 1 month and 1 week.
To take off from the veer in the other thread. In heavy rotation at home...
The School House Rock collection DVD
The Muppet Show, Season 1
Wallace and Grommit (shorts and Curse of the Wererabbit)
Charlottes Web (which I hate)
Intermittently Blue's Clues, Dora the Explorer, and Vegitales (which I was very surprised to find out that I like quite a lot)
Over the weekend, I was part of an exhibit with a group called Dinosaur World out of San Antonio... We got two Dinosaur George DVDs that Lexi loves(!!!!!!!) and are pretty damn entertaining for grown ups. Dinosaur George is fantastic at presenting a lecture to kids.
In my truck CD-player, our heavy rotation is:
They Might Be Giants (I own all of their stuff)
Saturday Morning Cartoon's Greatest Hits (This one has been played to death, but Lexi loves Speed Racer, Sublime playing Hong Kong Phoey, and the B$*%@~&& Surfers singing Underdog)
School House Rock Rocks!
Vegitales CDs
Philadelphia Chickens
Cake (sellected songs... I'll let her listen to, say, The Distance, but not Italian Leather Sofa)
I'll repost my list here from the other thread, and amend it with music selections and toy selections.
I have a 2.5 year old son and a baby due any day now. We try to restrict greatly what our son watches, particularly after discovering he has some slight delays in development of speech.
Television:
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* Once per day, 1 hour wiggles or teletubbies video. We let him watch these with light supervision now, and he understands he only gets one per day.
* College Sports - Basketball at the moment, we watch with him and play basketball during the commercials. Sometimes he just likes to hear the fan noise and pretends he's playing in the game himself. Supervision is required as sometimes the commercials! can be violent.
* Movies with a plot - This is a catchall for Disney and similar movies. These are occasionally permitted, only with supervision and we talk about what is going on in the movie with our son while it's on. Not enjoyable to watch movies at our house if you hate people who talk through movies. These are also the only types of things permitted in the car.
* Sesame Street - During breakfast and occasionally at lunch. Supervision is required so we can talk about what he is seeing.
Music
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In the car it's classical or jazz only. No kids songs. However in looking at the list above I think I might be open to listening to other music.
In the house we have classical bedtime CDs in a rotation for bedtime only. During the day we have a variety of kiddie songs that annoy the heck out of me and that is why they stay in the house.
Games
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Cariboo - from Cranium games... a must have for 2 and up. Forget what the box says, it's 2 and up. You can play it with the beginner cards and it teaches basic colors, shapes, letters and counting. Out son is a master at the game already, and he can't wait to get to the end when the treasure chest opens. If you have young kids take a look at this game.
Melissa and Doug wooden toys - They make some really good educational wooden toys for kids. We recently bought the musical "Band in a Box" and are having great fun with it. It helps that I play my baritone ukulele to my son every night when I get home from work since now he can play along with me crashing cymbals all the way! I also think their wooden puzzles are bar none the best out there.
I have more stuff but I am interested in what others have for entertaining / educating their kids to eventually become big time roleplayers :)
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We normally have more relaxing music playing in the background during supper...typically classical or jazz, but sometimes we slip in some Lyle Lovett, B.B. King, Chieftans, or Squirrel Nut Zippers to break things up a bit. Lexi likes Gershwin, Paganini, and Chopin. She likes Josephine Baker, but hasn't made her mind up about John Coltrane yet.
I bought my son two oversized D20's for Christmas. He can also sign "dragon" and "monster" in ASL. I let him roll my dice rolls when feasible and move miniatures on the battlemat. He's learned he can't just go crazy or throw dice wherever he wants (unlike some of my players).
ASL is good for kids even without hearing problems. We got my son the 6 DVD series of signing time videos and they are awesome educational tools, even for kids without problems.
I don't have kids, but my gamer friends do. She'll be 8 this year, and I've found that talking to her like an adult (not kiddy talk, blargh) is a step in the right direction. Since we're all also into the SCA, she comes along as well ("When's our next event?"). She also asks new kids she meets "What's your SCA name?" She loves the dress-up part of it and loves meeting other kids. Seeing everybody in garb definitely helps. I don't know whether or not she'll be into gaming yet, but it's a start.
That's awesome! Jessie (my friend's daughter) has an oversized plushie d4. My players got me a plushie d20, big red, size of a basketball. I love it.
I bought my son two oversized D20's for Christmas. He can also sign "dragon" and "monster" in ASL.
I have two daughters, one 5 year-old and an 18-month old. They both love to be around the D&D table and will often roll dice for whomever they are nearest.
The TV is on pretty much constantly, but we're usually not in front of it except for breakfast and lunch, or on "pajama days." The girls pretty much play with their toys, chase the dog, color, pick on the dog, snack, tease the dog, fight each other (that started sooner than I expected), let the dog out unsupervised, play, go out and look for the dog, get ready for bed, give the dog a break.
They love music, and we listen to Dora the Explorer, Veggie Tales, The Wiggles, Playhouse Disney, Kim Possible, Little People CDs, Blue's Clues, Strawberry Shortcake, just to name the most popular.
My 5 yr-old has recently discovered that she likes jazz, "Daddy's Music," as well as country, "Mommy's music." I think the jazz started this past Christmas as I was playing Brian Setzer. She liked it so much that it barely left the car CD for a week.
We have a lot of DVDs, and I think that the Scooby Doo movies/tv series get the most viewing time.
I play trumpet, and the girls will usually end up in whichever room I'm practicing in, usually with a xylophone or drum. My older girl likes to blow into the trumpet, and can make a single note, and will sometimes stand in front of my music stand and sing or make "trumpet sounds."
As for D&D, she also likes to take the miniatures and stage fights with them. She recently started rolling dice and writing down the numbers that she gets. I guess I'm going to have to help her make a character soon. :)
Well, I guess I started young, and have you all beat. My son got me back into D&D when he was 10 (5 years ago). He's been occasional DM since age 13. Since he probably is exposed to far worse with his peers, I've decided not to worry too much about adult topics in our D&D games--if I'm not squeamish about them myself, anyway. Roleplaying actually leads to real-life discussions sometimes, which is a good thing.
My sisters are not gamers, but their kids love to play. It's a bit more challenging DMing for a group aged 9-16 because of the different levels of understanding and roleplaying skills across the age group. But it's still fun for everyone, most of the time.
My advice to those of you nurturing potential gamer children? Nurture their imagination as much as you can. Don't let them watch too much TV/videos or spend too much time playing video games. Read to them regularly--especially C.S. Lewis, Tolkien, R.L. Stevenson, and mythology oriented stuff packaged for kids. Don't expose them to too much violent media products, but don't shelter them too much either.
My two pfennig.
I've got one, and she is 3 months old. As far as music goes, we play just about everything... because my wife and I are music freaks. And little girl doesn't seem to mind!
Classical is big on car rides, but punk, ska, reggae, metal, bluegrass, soul and jazz all seem to get her little self moving.
A funny moment was when she was less than a month old, she was furious at the indignity of being given a bath. So we decided to sing to her. My wife starts in with... The Misfits. And soothed her. Here are two grown people singing to a baby, "I'm going to take you where your body will lie..." and it soothed the heck out of her. Comedy gold.
As for what she will be able to watch when she's older... We're not sure. We watch little to no TV, and when she's asleep, it's movies (MST3K is a big one...) We are going to try and get her grandmother (yay for free daycare!) to stick to educational programming, and limit the amount of TV that is on for background noise (then again, she is notorious for it...), but our take on it is if we keep aware of what she's seeing and talk with her about it, we should be fine.
And as for gaming, if she's anything like her mother and I she'll ahve a healthy fascination with monsters. Hope fully she'll get my affinity for dice. :)
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Signing Time Kids Videos
Those are really good videos! We have the second one (Playing time). The only problem is that the theme song gets caught in my brain some times. Then it's "It's signing time with Alex and Leah..." for about three hours straight.
I'm with you, Peruhain, anything that sparks real intrest or concern should be talked about. With Lexi being 3 during my wife's pregnancy, there was a lot of interest in how the baby got in there? How will he get out? Does he have to be a boy? Your Children's Section librarian at your local public library can almost definitely give you age-appropriate materials for all sorts of problems and touchy topics of inquiry.
It's really interesting when you start to give them info and then watch them reasoning out cause and effect. Lexi's associative reasoning can be spooky sometimes. My wife was putting on a pair of amber ear-rings before we went out one day and Lexi was watching her intently. When she asked my wife what she was doing, Rachel said "I'm putting on my earrings."
Lexi looked doubtful and said "I don'think those are ear rings, I think they're a bug house." Somewhere she had seen a picture of a bug in amber and was able to pull the two together. She was about 2 1/2 at the time, so it kinda freaked us out.
I wish I coud say the children where mine, but they were the borrowed babysittee's.
I tried to run a game with the kids in my life (8 yrs, 11 yrs, 12, 11 and I think one 13 yr old). After they had become old enough to stay at home after school or found afterschool daycares they all insisted they wanted to come see me and literally, while unknown to me, saved up to buy their own dice because they overhead me say to Thanis that people needed to bring their dice to game and the children all wanted to play.
The oldest girl even painted a jar, came with a drawing and a mini that she tried to figure out how to paint on her own before we even started making charaters.
Due to school activies and such we ended up not being able to do game since the kids were never avaible at the same time, but one of them uses the SRD to come up with monsters and villians for her stories and wants Mr. Thanis to teach her (this would be the 11 yr old) to DM.
Back when the girls were age 3&5 (the other players where their friends) they would sneak out of bed at night to listen in to Thanis' and I's D&D game we would play on the phone. About six months ago the younger one approached me with a small purple d20, my first d20 that I had lost behind the dresser from when she was 3.
Kids are cute.
Wow am I the only parent of a Thomas & Friends addict (O.K. I became a bit obsessed with the trains myself).
My son, now 2yrs 3 months, loves Thomas. It started with a video and spread from there. This is the only kids show I know of with weird narrators like Ringo Starr & George Carlin. I mean, who would ever think George Carlin and kids videos?
Personally I was prepared to resist liking Thomas. They’re only glorified toy trains with exchangeable faces to give the impression of an animated feature. I actually wanted to dislike them because of how low tech the show is. None-the-less, I watched a couple episodes. I got to know the characters and the imaginary Island of Sodor and I admit I’m hooked too. You could say my wife & I swallowed the bait, to continue the analogy, because we’ve bought into the toy line, the cloths, the dishes and utensils…. It’s a bit silly over here.
All that said I’m actually amazed at how many cool low level adventure ideas you can come up with by borrowing from the Thomas & Friends plots. I’ve been inspired to create my own little imaginary Island of Adventure. Alas, the other thing that kids do is occupy a lot of time that was once spent developing game ideas.
The music preferences are too wide and varied to cover but I will mention my son’s latest favourite; it’s Michael Buble’s jazz rendition of the old 70’s “Spider-Man” theme song. It’s hilarious to here him walking around singing: “Pider Man, Pider Man… wha evr a pider can….”.
I hope he’ll take an interest in gaming so we’ll be able to share the experience. Its still a ways off though. Till then, I’ll have to be satisfied with Thomas.
Cheers,
C.
Well, my 3 1/2 year old is partial to dora, pooh, scooby and breakfast with the werebear, thankfully she has outgrown Barney and doesn't like much else; Kipper is becoming a new fad. I tried to buy her her own set of oversized d&d dice, but the local guy says there distributor can't get any. Have to do something cause she keeps stealing my dice and playing d&d with the dog. Got a new kid coming in May; thought about getting him/her a players handbook at birth like from the if D&D ers ruled the world thread, but am sure the version would change yet again before it became useful.
Music; in her room is some Camper song cd from a guy we saw at the fair; is pretty good. In the auto or living room, we mosty channel surf but the kid is partial to mexican polkas so she has me stop there quite often. It can be quite funny seeing her in her pirate get up, wearing her sword and cap flintlock pistol while explaining that she is a bad guy and needs me to reload for her with mexican polkas, which we dont understand the words for, blaring in the background. We also listen to Dr. Demento cd's, the ballad of Bilbo Baggins for example, which should make everything clear.
Signing Time Kids VideosThose are really good videos! We have the second one (Playing time). The only problem is that the theme song gets caught in my brain some times. Then it's "It's signing time with Alex and Leah..." for about three hours straight.
Tell me about it! I'm going to buy my soon the new 3 DVD set that just came out, making it a total of 9 volumes. He's slowly transitioning away from signing as he's becoming much more verbal, but he still fingerspells like a champ!
If you want some really good driving music pick up the Curious George soundtrack. Snappy tunes that you find yourself singing along to. The movie was pretty good too, my 2.5 year old liked it (first movie experience)
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I'm proud to report that the Gamer genes are running deep within my daughter. She's almost 4 and just last week her pet fish Rainbow went belly up. After the requisite burial at sea, my wife took her to the pet store yesterday for a new one. Instead of the betas or goldfish, Lexi decided that she liked the feeder fish. At 12 cents per, my wife wasn't going to argue. Lexi chose her fish, the attendant scooped them out and asked her what she was going to name them. Quite matter of factly, Lexi said "Spiderman", then thought for a second and said "and The Thing in the Lake".
The fact that I wasn't there and wasn't prompting her disturbs my wife all the more. It's great!
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My boy is almost 3. Last month he found a 20-sided die. He didn't eat it, so I showed him how to roll. Then he rolled a 17. I was like, "yeah, let's see you do that again," so he rolled a 16,19,5,20. If he and his little sister ever deign to let me play again, he's definitely coming with to be my little good luck Buddha.
I have one daughter Hannah (nearly 3), and a son on the way Michael. She's obsessed with Pokemon and My Little Pony (the first I got her into, the second my wife). She likes to watch "spaceships" (Firefly) and "scary man" (X-Files). She loves horror movies, especially zombie flicks--warms my heart. She points at the screen and says "zombie!". I bought her her own N64 and Pokemon Stadium and Snap, though the controls are a bit beyond her still. She loves to play with dad's computer keyboard and his big tackle box of dice (which she will dump out and either pour into a bucket or will sort by die type--a pile of 4s, 6s, 8's and so forth). She's up to 8 word sentences, where she's only supposed to be at 3-5. She loves to sit with dad and read his "dragon book" the Monster Manual and his "sword book" the PHB. She has learned her colors by the chromatic dragons. She knows the names of our roleplaying group better than her extended family.
Yep.
Chip off the old block.
My 5yo girl and 12yo boy account for 2/5ths of my current gaming-group. We're Celtic music, soundtracks, and 80's rock folks. They watch pretty much whatever I do and ahve been known to watch Star Wars while armed w/ Nerf guns, in order to blast Stormtroopers. They also assisted when their baby sister was born at home just over a year ago.