My little boy is 4 years old and, for the most part, I've done him the disservice of assuming he's still pretty much useless at everything. I should stress that this is an viewpoint born from the experience of watching him try to put his shoes on correctly or walk through a doorway without cracking his head into a solid object. Anyway, we've shared an interest from day one, and that's cars. He seemingly has thousands of the toys, scattered everywhere in the house (and I'm as much to blame for that, I'll admit; "Hey, Jeanette, hold on a minute. I
must get Ethan this 1970 Porsche 917 for his collection!" and so on).
Anyway, a few months back he took an interest in the driving games which I play on the PC and XBox and, after shooing him away with the assumption he'd less use behind the wheel than a drunk, blind geriatric, I've taken to involving him in my games... and he's shocked me. The little bugger's getting pretty competent with a controller; he loves a donut and has pulled off some pretty decent drifts in his time. He can also drive more than fifty metres without looking like a car/hedge/tree interaction is imminent, so that places him above his mum in the skills stakes.
The downside is, while working from home in the current environment, he asks if I've "finished work yet?" every five minutes, so that we can play. It gets tedious, quickly, but I still wouldn't change it for the world. I catch Jeanette chuckling as she passes by while Ethan's berating me for not taking the road he wanted to explore, shouting "INCOMING!" as he launches his '70s muscle car* off a cliff into an abyss with maniacal glee or bellowing "TREE FIGHT!" when he enters a wooded area at full speed.
(*Yes, he seems to love old American muscle cars. I have 300+ cars available in Forza Horizon 4 and, without prompting, he gravitates towards those old school, noisy barges. Good lad. His mother, also a fan, is proud. The downside is that he now wants me to buy one. In real life. Preferably one which has "the engine sticking out of the bonnet". His head will explode when he watches The Fast and the Furious).
PS. Having said the above, I was less than impressed with Ethan's suggestion that "we should smash your car up like that" followed by "it's okay, you can just get a new one".
PPS. Yes, that's my kids playing a PC game (BeamNG.Drive, if you're interested) while watching sodding a YouTube video about car games on the TV in my home office. This could be a slippery slope.
PPS. Don't judge me about their hair. It always looks like that, even after combing/brushing. I have a pair of scarecrows for kids.
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Ethan carnage level: Standard
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