Technology

The Audio-Visual Club: Kids and Audiobooks

| Mary Stoffel, MOT, OTR/L

“I want people to stop saying, ‘I didn’t really read it, I just listened.’ Stop that. If you listened, you read it. There’s no right way to absorb a book.” – Reese Witherspoon

I enjoy reading a physical book. My husband, however, does not. He prefers putting on his headphones and listening on Audible. He told me that he’s “read” three books over the summer. He’s not the only one in my social circle to count listening to an audiobook as reading. Friends will tell me they’ve read a 560-page novel over the weekend (you what?!) and then clarify that they listened to it during their road trip. Even Patti will simultaneously juggle multiple books for her book club and Child(ish) Reads posts, a feat made easier with paperback, ebook, and audiobook formats.

As audiobooks become more mainstream, it got me thinking about the trickle-down to kids. Is listening to a book the same as reading one? Can children benefit from this type of auditory medium or would it hinder their ability to read? Inquiring minds would like to know.

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Prepping for Healthy Gaming

| Patti Webb

In my Healthy Gamer book review, I shared a bit about my brother’s and my relationship with video games growing up. I’ve also shared about my husband Troy being a serious gamer well into his adulthood. And now that we have two kids who are ready for beginner video games, we’ve had to create a workable plan for having them in our home.

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The OT in Video Gaming

| Mary Stoffel, MOT, OTR/L

I’m just going to come out and say it: Gaming has gotten a bad rap.

Despite its associations with a sedentary lifestyle or as a catalyst for violence and aggression, new research has found that there’s much more to gaming and these negative connotations have no real proof.

That’s a good thing as gaming has evolved with our lifestyle and in its own medium. It is literally at our fingertips whenever we’re bored or want a quick escape from our daily life. And even if we don’t engage in video games, our kids definitely know about them; from YouTube videos and Twitch to classmates talking about it in school. In other words, gaming culture is here to stay and we’re here for it.

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Things I Learned on TikTok

| Patti Webb

Very apropos considering Tuesday’s Netflix post and that TikTok might be getting banned. Maybe not so apropos considering one of my Resolutions is cutting screen time…

There are so many parenting influencers (we do consider ourselves one), and all of those accounts, commentaries and opinions contribute to a lot of parenting noise. What may have started as a mindless scroll to turn your brain off, might end up with you questioning your parenting choices, feeling like you have to buy every product under the sun, or leave you genuinely scared for this generation.

And it doesn’t stop at parenting noise. Similar to spending hours on a video game or bingeing on the couch, once you stop, you’re like “Where did my life go?”. You end up dysregulated, feeling lazy, and asking yourself “Did I really need to watch 20 minutes of wild Karen encounters?”

In my infinite scrolling last fall, an ad showed up about turning your screen time into microlearning. Of course, I’m not going to pay for whatever app or course they are trying to promote, but it did make me reconsider the types of content I’ve been consuming.

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Child(ish) Reads: How to Raise a Healthy Gamer

| Patti Webb

I usually don’t have two book reviews this close…

I received an advance copy of How to Raise a Healthy Gamer and was planning on saving it for May when we have a whole week talking only about video games. I’m only about 70% done with this book, but I think the psychology and framework can be applied to other things besides gaming.

Author Dr. Alok Kanojia introduces himself as a former video game-addicted undergrad who got kicked out of UT Austin for skipping nearly all of his classes. Kanojia then went to a monastery in India when he realized he did indeed have a problem. There, he learned the power of the mind to control his own thoughts (in addition to yoga, meditation and Reiki) and returned to college. He now has a medical degree in Psychiatry.

In addition to being a therapist, Kanojia owns a mental health coaching company called Healthy Gamer that provides resources to overcome video game addiction. The book, How to Raise a Healthy Gamer: End Power Struggles, Break Bad Screen Habits, and Transform Your Relationship with Your Kids, helps parents understand modern video game addiction and work with their kids to create a plan to establish healthy gaming boundaries. It publishes March 12 and is available for pre-order.

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