Winter break is on day 8,694,938,234,567,983.5 at our house – which means I’ve succumbed to letting my kids play A LOT of video games – because I just don’t know what else we can possibly do.
However, instead of my children blissfully playing their games while I secretly sneak in a few more episodes of Riverdale while “folding laundry“, my children want me to play with them.
Yes, that’s right.
I now know EXACTLY how my mother felt when we begged and forced her to play Mario Cart with us.
My kids love Roblox.
And what is Roblox, exactly? Well, from what I gathered Roblox is a game within many games. Basically, you can pick different games within the app to play. Some of the games have you simply lift weights to get big. Yes, that’s right. Some of the games have you build tycoons or escape from buildings.
Does any of it make sense to me? No.
However, I did learn quite a bit while playing Roblox with my kids.
First, my kids really wanted to protect me. It was pretty sweet. Minus the fact that apparently in Roblox random players can just kill you on a whim. Which my kids protected me from – for the most part.
Second, my kids could literally talk for hours on end about all of the different things they could buy if they only had robux. Of which I refuse to purchase because I’m cheap.
Third, my kids were incredibly elated when I finished one of the games and couldn’t stop talking about how awesome I was. It was a pretty big deal in my house that day and my kids truly made me feel so special about it.
It was a strange feeling – having my children have to show me every single aspect of something – they were the teachers and I was the student. More like I was the uninterested, unmotivated student who didn’t want to be there and just wanted to know who the black hood was! {Riverdale reference}
But they didn’t care. All they cared about was me finishing my Tycoon – they helped me every chance they could. If a money crate came up they alerted me and made sure I got it before other players. If some crazy person from another tycoon was coming over – they blocked the entrance and fought them off.
They cared more about me succeeding than their own success.
I learned a lot about my kids while playing Roblox. And it made me happy to know how much they really cared about me – even if we were in a pretend world where money literally dropped out of the sky.
So maybe they’ve had too much screen time – okay yes – they’ve had way too much screen time, but getting to be a part of their world made me realize that I must be doing something right.
*And btw – if you’re trying to finish your superhero tycoon – save your coins for money droppers – you’ll double your coins and then you can build your walls and stairs and floors. Just sayin’ – from one tycoon expert to another.
