Raising a Gamer: Playing With Daddy's Laptop

Ten years out of college, after the bottom fell out of the industry, my husband finally managed to break his way back into IT. I am very proud of him and he is absolutely loving every minute of it. Inevitably, this has led to much more tech speak at the dinner table and much more "stuff" around the house. We now have an i Phone, a cell phone, two laptops, two desktops and bags of other equipment that I dare not look into. This has of course been a great source of interest for our ever curious two-year-old. Much in the same way that we realized we had to find a way to share Daddy's board games with him, we knew we had to show him what this area of his family's life was all about. You know, before he did more than snap off a few keys on the big laptop!

When he was nine months old his Great Aunt gave him a Thomas the Tank Engine Laptop. It's full of cute games and lessons for kids, and he enjoyed punching all the keys. Being so young, however, he quickly lost interest and we packed it away for a later date. Tired of watching Daddy play Portal 2 and Mummy play Glitch, recently he has wanted a much more hands-on approach to all the technology now littering our house. We pulled out the Thomas laptop and he was entranced. He is still far too young for most of the games on it, but will sit still for at least ten minutes, side by side with daddy, "working" on his laptop. No keyboards have been damaged since. I'm not quite sure I'm up for the LeapFrog experience with him yet, but this eight-year-old laptop is serving the purpose just fine for right now.