Should a 5 year old be playing video games?
A five year old child is old enough to play video games if s/he is supervised and plays age appropriate games. The key here is "balance," meaning playing video games should be mixed with participation in other activities as well; sports, music, art, reading, and of course, social interaction with kids and adults.
As long as your child is developing normally, a 5-year old should be able to play video games for an hour a day. However, a 5-year-olds brain is not fully developed and should they be spending countless hours a day playing video games, well that’s not good. It’s important for them to be with friends, playing and learning with other people. Don’t let them play video games to close to bed time as it may interfere with their sleep.
Media and violence never belong in a child’s life. I am a preschool teacher with lots of early childhood development education and experience (and mother to 2 children) and find children have many problems because of this kind of exposure. Children have many other important things to explore at this age and if their time is spent doing this kind of activity it will make them suffer in other areas that they need to know for school readiness. Please find another positive outlet for this child. They need books (no media junk), lots of social experiences with children their age, let them use their Imagination and encourage it and use open ended activities such as play-dough and art to express themselves, let them use scissors and colored pencils to cut and build fine motor skills important for kindergarten, let them physically move their bodies and get lots of exercise, and give them sensory activities (shaving cream on a table to feel, a sand table or water table to play in). Talk to your
My 3 and 4 year old have a Vtech motion. It’s a video game made for younger kids and has age appropriate games. They do not play it for 2-3 hours though. They don’t even play it everyday. They usually play it about once a week and I would never let them play games that are not age appropriate. However, she is the mother not you so you can’t tell her what to do or what not to do with your brother. Try sitting down and talking with her (Not arguing but talking). Explain to her why you don’t think he should play those games. If she still doesn’t listen then hide your games that are not appropriate for him to play.
I say it is okay to play, but not the way that he is currently. My son is 5 and we have an XBOX 360 and a Wii. He is only allowed to play rated E games and he knows this. He will tell you that he is not allowed to play games that are rated M or T. He had a couple of fighting games that were E 10 + and we don’t let him play those anymore either. He had some problems with getting rough at daycare and once we stopped letting him playing the games, it stopped. We took all video games away from him for awhile and got him into other things and now that he can play them again… he doesn’t play them nearly as much. Maybe you can help get him into something after school that is more active and more appropriate for his age! I say 30 min after school is enough and maybe a little longer on the weekends. Your brother is lucky to have you as a sibling! =) Good luck! I hope things work out!
