Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: parenting in cohousing. video games

[Diana Carroll (dianaecarroll]

On Wed, Jun 15, 2011 at 6:41 PM, Brian Tremback <brian.tremback [at] 
gmail.com>wrote:

>
> Do you find that video games actually have much of a social component?
> Given
> that's it's been a few years since my kids were actively playing them in
> our
> home (before cohousing days), I rarely saw them actually play cooperatively
> or interact much during the game. The most social it got was watching each
> other play.
>

I think "watching each other play" is social...generally it seems to involve
a lot of jumping around shouting "go there, go there, no THERE!  YES!!!
woo!!!" and such.

My kids are enjoying a couple video games now with multi-player modes, so
they are interacting with friends (mostly schoolmates or cohousing
neighbors) *in the game*.   In fact, they've taken to setting up a webcam
and speaker while playing so that they can chat and compare notes while they
play.

There are also games that make for fun interactions, like Rock Band and
Karoake.  In my family we specific seek out games with "co-op" modes.  The
kids love the Lego video games for this.

They aren't doing this in the CH, but they could be.  It's definitely a
social activity.

At any rate, I don't agree (if this is what you were implying) that only
social functions are valid common house functions.  To the contrary, we've
designed to allow for quiet solitary activities (e.g. reading in the living
room) as well as small group and large group activities.  I think lots of
folks, like me, enjoy "parallel play" -- doing our own private thing, but
doing it in the company of friendly folks doing their own private thing.
The CH is great that way.

-Diana (Mosaic Commons, Berlin, MA)