Bonding over video games

If you asked me if I would have spent an enormous amount of my time this spring and summer playing a game called Animal Crossing, I definitely wouldn’t have thought the answer would be yes.

But several months ago, my teen asked me if I wanted to play, and when I said yes, we proceeded to spend more time talking and having something in common to bond over then we have in a long time.

Animal Crossing

Photo of Nintendo Switch with Animal Crossing Game

Animal Crossing has a lot of fun ways that you can have special moments with folks. If you’re playing with people on a different island, you can go for visits and you can mail them presents. If you’re in the same family/playing on the same Nintendo Switch you can also send mail or do what I do and drop off gifts in front of the kids’ houses.

We’ve been able to plan out parts of the islands and figure out how to create hybrid flowers together, making for lots of opportunities for great conversations and time spent together.

It’s not really about the game

The thing is, the video game was the topic, but it’s really about meeting them where they’re at. We don’t have a lot we both want to do any more. Animal Crossing turned out to be a blessing because I really do enjoy the game. And since then I’ve been introduced to quite a few other games (most of which I am not particularly interested in ) and the kids get really invested in trying to show me how to play or being amused at just how many times I can NOT land that jump in Celeste or at how confused I am about what I’m supposed to be doing in Paper Mario or trying to get me to take on my Rhythm Heaven Fever challenges with them. ;)

It works beyond video games too

My husband has been watching a lot of anime with our teen lately on Crunchyroll (and Netflix has many of the Studio Ghibli films available). He enjoys Anime but hasn’t really spent time watching any since he was in his twenties. This gives them something that is for them and gives them a reason to hang out together.

I have another friend who chooses and watches a show regularly with their teen - it’s not always a show they particularly want to watch, but it’s really not about that, and we need to remember that when saying yay or nay.

Next time you see an opportunity to connect on something, even if it wouldn’t be YOUR choice of things, it may make for the perfect chance to bond with a kid who seems more inclined to hang out by themselves in their room than with you any more.

In case you’re here for the Animal Crossing part, I want to share a few of my tips for the game ;):

• There is a money rock on your island every day. Hit it with your shovel (not your axe) as fast as you can after creating a way to not bounce away (I dig holes or bounce against a flat surface) and you’ll get more bells (this works for getting more resources too - you can get up to eight).

• Save all the fish and bugs in your storage for the days that Flick and CJ come to buy them from you. You’ll get more bells that way.

• You can catch the wasps almost every time if you’re holding your net when you’re shaking a tree, facing the tree from the front and immediately turn in the directly the nest falls and swing. The wasps are worth at least 2500 bells so it’s worth it.

• There is at least one item hiding in a tree on your island every day, sometimes more. I like to shake the trees looking for items and wasps.

Five Fun Apps for kids for the Holidays

Flying or long road trips with kids can be rough when they get bored. A tablet loaded with your kids’ favourite apps can help keep them entertained. We asked our community what some of their kids’ favourite apps are. Below, we list five of those apps. Note: some apps are free with in-app purchases or pop-up ads, and some offer a paid version.

Knowledge Kids

Perfect for ages two to eight, Knowledge Kids is commercial free shows your children will recognize from television. Knowledge Kids offers hundreds of episodes of various popular kids shows including, Paw Patrol, Wild Kratts, Kate and Mim-Mim, Zerby Derby, Mister Maker, Astroblast, Ruff-Ruff, Tweet and Dave, Annedroids and more. It’s all kid-friendly and episodes are refreshed weekly.

Libby App

Forget packing all your kids books with you when you travel! Download the Ottawa Public Library App and the Libby App and download your kids’ favourite audio books and e-books! Libby, by OverDrive allows you to instantly borrow and download hundreds of titles for all ages! Works on your cell phone or tablet.

Subway Surfers

Dash through the holiday themed tracks and collect coins and points. Fun for the entire family.

This app is fun and action packed.

Toca Life: World

Toca Life: World is where users can create their own world and play out any story you like. This mega-app brings all of the Toca Life apps (City, Vacation, Office, Hospital and more) together in the same space. That’s right. Appeals to kids of all ages and interests.

Santa Tracker and Status Check

Stay up to date this Christmas, and see where is Santa Claus and what he is up to! Kids can track Santa's location on the map - the Santa Tracker shows you Santa's real-time location and the distance to your home. Follow Santa's sleigh while he delivers gifts around the world on December 24th! There is also a Christmas Countdown - how many sleeps until Christmas? See the countdown happen in real-time. You can also check what Santa is up to - how many cookies did he eat? How much milk?

Do you have any app suggestions that your kids love? Leave a comment and let us know.

Watch our CTV Ottawa Morning Live Segment that explains more about these apps.

Looking for holiday activities the entire family can enjoy? Check out: The Holidays in Ottawa: 25 things to do under $25.

Exploring with the Spot App

by Kamerine

Kids are natural explorers. It starts with infancy - they want to touch and feel everything. Soon they are toddling around their environment. They put things in their mouths and get so dirty! Their desire to learn is insatiable.

It's no different with technology. I think they push all the buttons on remotes and iDevices because they aren't worried about breaking the thing. They just want to know what happens when they push THIS button or THAT button! And it's amazing what they can learn about devices in a short time. I swear my kids know how to work the remotes and my phone better than I do!

Screen time is part of our reality these days. Limited screen time is good but sometimes letting the kids watch a show or play on the iPad is what gets us through the day. The new Spot app is perfect for little explorers. The app opens to a white screen with a ladybug and then the exploring begins.

Little fingers pull apart to make the ladybug bigger... and bigger... and BIGGER! until a new world is uncovered. This goes on and on in the app, exploring what's inside cookies and papers and the table. The whole world can be explored and fun things found.

It was so much fun watching those little fingers going all over and the looks of excitement at discovering what there was to see next. The Spot app is very creative and fun, but it's no wonder when it was created by David Wiesner, a celebrated story teller. Spot allows kids to come up with their own story.

Without a specific task or bad guys to battle, my 5 year old son didn't stay interested too long, but my 4 year old daughter had fun exploring until it was time to turn off the screen. I love how this app encourages exploration and imagination.

This app is for iPads and is available for purchase in the App Store for $4.99. What apps are your kids loving these days?

Disclaimer: I was provided a code to download this app for free. All opinions are my own. 

Kids and social media

I've been invited to appear on CTV Morning Live this morning to talk about kids and social media. I decided that I'd put some of what I'm going to talk about into a blog post and would love your thoughts and opinions on the subject in the comments.

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It's hard to avoid social media in this day and age but when should kids start getting involved? Should you be letting your kids have Facebook, Instagram or Twitter accounts?

Terms of Services

The first thing to note is that almost every single social network requires anyone who signs up to be at least 13. This is because of the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act in the US which won't allow private information to be obtained from children.  Because that's what most of the social networks are actually doing, it's easier for them to simply not allow children under 13 on to their sites.

If you make your decision based solely on the actual rules, your children shouldn't be on any of these sites if they're under 13.

What if you want to let them anyways?

I personally am a fan of giving my children a lot of knowledge. A lot of parents don't think kids under 13 should be allowed on social sites because they aren't mature enough and others believe that the rules are the rules and you shouldn't break them. I don't agree with breaking the rules in general but I also want to raise children who learned from a young age what it means to be online. My eight and a half year old has a Facebook account, but he has very little access to it and it's very supervised (he mostly uses it to play occasional Facebook games or to post a few photos to his small network). 

Rules and Regulations

As such, I think it's very important, at whatever age you're starting your kids online to have a lot of rules and discussions.  The rules I recommend are:

- A parent must always have access to all passwords. If passwords aren't working or have been changed, access to internet and devices is removed. (In our house because my son is only 8, he doesn't even know his passwords, if he wants to do something online someone needs to log him in.)

- Don't expect any privacy online. It's not a private place and as a parent we are responsible for them and their actions. This means they can be spot checked at any time by us logging in and going through what they've been up to. They also must let us be connected to them on all channels.

- Privacy settings must be set up by a parent and aren't to be changed.

Discussions

Before kids go online there are a lot of important discussions that need to happen. Both of these topics are actually deserving of entire posts on their own.

Privacy: Don't share personal information online. Your kids need to understand this and why. First and foremost, it's for their safety.

Cyberbullying: It's easy to be mean online. Teaching your kids empathy and the importance of being kind online is critical and an important discussion to have before your kids start spending time on social sites.

Model good behaviour

The best way to teach your kids what appropriate online behaviour is is to model it yourself. Don't share inappropriate content online,  ask your children if they mind having information about them shared online before you share it, be respectful of others and always remember how permanent the internet is. I often show my kids what I do online so they can see what it's all about.

Where should they start?

Regardless of what age you start your kids on social sites at (before 13 or not) a great way to start is with a closed network. Facebook, Twitter and Instagram are all examples of networks that allow you to keep your information in a private setting and that's a great way to create a safer environment for your kids to experiment in. 

For more information there are a lot of great resources on Common Sense Media including a post on what a good age to get started is.

This was just a quick overview and we can go into much more depth on a lot of the subjects. If there's anything in particular you want to know more about - let me know!

I know this can be a hot topic so please share your comments (respectfully of course :) below.

Managing your child's iPod use with OurPact

by Eric

For his birthday last September, our eight year old asked for an iPod Touch. He’s been in his room ever since.

But seriously, when he got the iPod, we were able to set up a childrens’ account through Family Sharing in iOS8, which makes it so he can’t purchase new apps without first getting approved. We used Restrictions to turn off Safari and In-App purchases and tried to make it as safe an environment as possible.

After seeing how his parents have a tendency to be glued to their own devices, it shouldn’t have surprised us when he disappeared into his room and didn’t come out unless summoned. I looked into the different parenting apps and discovered:

• An app that filled the screen with an alert that couldn’t be turned off until usage was allowed again (unless you reset the phone and didn’t load that app)
• An app that used a VPN to allow you to monitor and block your child’s usage from your phone (except if the phone went to sleep, then when it was turned on again the VPN was disabled)
• An app that produced an alarm that reminded him that it was time to turn off the phone (which, after hitting OK let him ignore and continue playing)

Finally, an actual useful solution was found - the OurPact app for iDevices (Android development is currently ongoing).

OurPact is an app you install on your device to schedule app usage on your children’s devices. Once I set up an account in the app, I was able to pair my son’s iPod to it and set up schedules where the device is blocked – where all non-Apple installed apps are turned off.

Additionally we have the ability to grant access remotely during these blocked hours (“Your homework is done early? Okay, you can have fifteen minutes of apps”) and block apps when they’re not (“Why can't he hear me calling? He’ll certainly hear me now…” – blocks apps –  “Oh, hi there.”).

You can even add multiple iDevices to monitor, which we did when I got a new phone and the younger siblings inherited my old one.

The only downsides we’ve noticed are that there isn’t yet the ability to give a daily allowance of hours and there’s no ability to block only certain apps – though we’ve been told those features are in development in future versions of the app.

OurPact is free for iOs and has been a nice way for us to help manage device usage in our home.