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On The Road: BBC Segment On Understanding Player Emotions

We were invited back to BBC Radio to talk about how to avoid fears about video games and children. During the conversation, we talked about how to avoid arguments and help children understand their emotions around gaming. 

"Video games have become our playground and place we escape to. Tell me about the journey you've encountered in supporting parents," we were asked. As you can hear in the video below, we talked through how video games had benefitted families and children during the lockdown and beyond.

"Video games offer a calming and reassuring space for children," said our editor, Andy Robertson. "We help parents find games that suit their children really well and can become healthily anchored in family life." 

"The hard thing for me as a parent is that this is something I'm not that into. It's easy for us to put a time limit on gaming for kids, but that can cause arguments. How do you navigate this tricky area of getting children to stop?" We were asked.

"Once you have tried the games yourself," we replied, "you can play a role of helping a child navigate moments of cross-ness or confusion. This means you can recognise when children are doing good etiquette work for their friends, and praise that."

"As a parent stepping in to the world of gaming, you can help children interpret their emotions and behaviour. But it does take time to find games that are the themes and topics that you value as a family."

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Andrew Robertson
Andy Robertson is the editor of AskAboutGames and has written for national press and broadcast about video games and families for over 15 years. He has just published the Taming Gaming book with its Family Video Game Database.