The little girl's been playing The Sims on her iPad since a few months after she turned 2, and is still at it several months later. I was a bit dubious about introducing her to it, but I'm pretty sure now I chose well. I picked the Sims because it's just a dollhouse game, and well, she has a dollhouse, so why not? There's no danger or skills required or violence or anything really out her understanding. And it's turned out to be helpful in some ways.
For starters, her ability to interact with the UI is as good as anyone's. There's an in-game task of catching ghosts where she has to tap on a randomly moving ghost. She gets it pretty often.
When she first started playing she'd sometimes start hunting for ghosts in our house. It was cute. She'd walks around with a stick or some kind, pointing in random directions, saying I'm hunting ghosts
. Occasionally I'd hold up a toy or something and say It's a ghost! quick! tap it
and she'd tap it with her finger repeatedly until she declared Yey! I got it
Anyway, back on topic. You can make the people in the game do things like eat, go the loo, etc. We've instilled in her that the people must must must wash their hands after going to the loo. If one of them walks away before washing their hands we make a very big deal of it oh no! He's got to wash his hands. Get him back.
To the point that not only will we occasionally hear her yell at the box no! Wash your hands!
, but she's usually very clear that she needs to wash her hands after using the loo.
Same thing with pets. When a person plays with a dog or cat I tell her they need to wash their hands. If the girl touches me after touching an animal, I'm allergic enough it will really do me in. So having a place for her to practice it is helpful.
She did point out recently that they have toothbrushes on their sinks, and was very confused when I told her she couldn't make them brush their teeth.
The sims can be dressed in many outfits. I advise her on what outfits work and what looks terrible. More a case of me instilling my tastes on her, I know. But at least we talk about what she likes vs what I like. And in a place where the people wearing those clothes won't be offended by our fashion policing.
I do have to turn the sound off whenever she plays. The music is a little grating after a while, but the main reason is the sims speak a made up language that sounds like English. This I found, to my horror, was interfering with her learning to talk. When she started playing she was only just starting to beat words into sentences. When I found her randomly peppering her speech with sim-words, I immediately went into the settings and turned off taking forever. As complaints against the game goes, it's pretty minor, considering the designers didn't have the impact on learning to speak in mind when they added the fake words.
We do get into arguments about some things. She has to go to work
. No she doesn't
. No really the game said it was time
. No. She has to take a bath now!
This never ends well. You see, the game has quests and other things you need to do to keep the fake little people alive and happy. But the girl can't read so she thinks all these things I say we need to do after there's a popup are just my whimsey.
She also likes to buy things using the in-game money ("simoleons"). Sometimes I'd be saving up to buy some rather expensive things like a cat or house. You see, after she goes to sleep, I set the sims on the tasks of making simoleons or "life points". Which takes a while, but it means we can do more fun things when she next plays the game. But, not infrequently, she'll, when my back is turned for a few seconds, spend some huge amount it took me weeks to acquire. Often on something meaningless like a chair.
That leads to arguments.
Sometimes L has to intervene and take the game away from both of us. Until we can show we can play nicely together.
I think these cases are more learning points for me. Get me used to how she treats limited resources and how to convince her to use them wisely. Or at least to understand what is a frivolous purchase and what would actually make her happy to have.
We're not there yet
All in all, the game seems to be doing her some good. Kind of like an interactive What Do People Do all Day but without the anthropomorphisation. I'd recommend it if you have a non-fragile device you feel safe leaving your kid alone with.
