Introducing Video Games

In our house, we don't exactly have a lot of video games being played. The kids got Kindles a few years ago from their grandparents (Josh's side) and, for the most part, that was the extent of their video gaming experience. As the years go on, I become more aware of how many kids these days spend hours on end playing game systems. It came down to the fact that we were actually the only people I knew that did not have a game system to play on. Well, we owned a Playstation 2 that has some issues with actually working, and have some very old systems that all have their issues (no working controllers and the like). But nothing was hooked up and available for anyone to play on. We'd go visit my nieces and they'd break out their Wii and start playing on it. My kids would try to play but basically just stood there clueless as could be. Then Alex started going over to friends' houses and all of his friends would be these complete experts on Xboxes. Alex would get his butt kicked trying to play because...once again...he was clueless. My point?

I started feeling a little bad.

Oh I know that video games are a privilege - not a right. But I really did feel like I was keeping my kids in the dark. So my brother-in-law gave us his old Xbox and Playstation2 the last time we visited. Do you know who was the first one to play (with much excitement, nonetheless)? Josh. Alex is trying to learn the controls and doing alright at it. He's super pumped to play Halo "just like his friends". I don't have the heart to tell him that his friends are probably playing Halo 5 on much nicer systems than we have. I grew up being super awesome with video games, and heck! I miss the Playstation2 at times. So I guess it's time to introduce video games to my sheltered children. I'm not sure how I feel about it. It's been in the house for a couple of weeks now and Alex has only played once. (He's been grounded...naturally.) Abby has zero interest in the "boy" games, so it looks like we need to go game shopping. And Evie? Evie is happy if she has a control in her hand (unhooked of course). I really want to break out my old Ratchett and Clank games for PSP2. But I'm scared that once I start, I'll get so addicted that I'll never get anything accomplished again. And the last thing I need, is a reason to waste  kill time.