Puffle rescue
Hard to believe I haven't blogged about this, but I checked a bit and couldn't find it so here it is.
Luke and Emmett play games on a website called ClubPenguin. It's a world where you are a penguin, you have an igloo, and you can adopt pets called Puffles - they look like little puff balls and come in many colors.
One of the games on the site is called Puffle Rescue. It's a frogger-like game, but with the penguin hopping on moving chunks of ice to rescue a stranded puffle. Everything starts pretty simple and slow, but it quickly speeds up and gets tough. Both Emmett and Luke play the game, but Luke is our resident expert.
When the game was first released, all I really knew was that Luke had started throwing huge fits about something that was going on with the computer. At first I told him that if he didn't enjoy the game, he just shouldn't play it. Then I realized that he was showing incredible persistence in trying to master this game, but he was just too young to deal with the frustrations of failing.
Unfortunately the game doesn't end until all of your penguins have fallen in the water, so every game eventually ends in failure. We worked around this in a few ways. I'd comfort him while he was upset, reminding him of how far he'd gotten and letting him know that he could try again. We started tracking the highest level he'd reached on the whiteboard and celebrating when he passed another. The fits gradually got shorter, and have now disappeared entirely. It may be because he's not trying to beat his record right now, but maybe (crossing fingers!) he's learned just a little bit about dealing with frustration. It feels kind of strange to be proud of my son for spending lots of time on a silly computer game, but I am.
Luke and Emmett play games on a website called ClubPenguin. It's a world where you are a penguin, you have an igloo, and you can adopt pets called Puffles - they look like little puff balls and come in many colors.
One of the games on the site is called Puffle Rescue. It's a frogger-like game, but with the penguin hopping on moving chunks of ice to rescue a stranded puffle. Everything starts pretty simple and slow, but it quickly speeds up and gets tough. Both Emmett and Luke play the game, but Luke is our resident expert.
When the game was first released, all I really knew was that Luke had started throwing huge fits about something that was going on with the computer. At first I told him that if he didn't enjoy the game, he just shouldn't play it. Then I realized that he was showing incredible persistence in trying to master this game, but he was just too young to deal with the frustrations of failing.
Unfortunately the game doesn't end until all of your penguins have fallen in the water, so every game eventually ends in failure. We worked around this in a few ways. I'd comfort him while he was upset, reminding him of how far he'd gotten and letting him know that he could try again. We started tracking the highest level he'd reached on the whiteboard and celebrating when he passed another. The fits gradually got shorter, and have now disappeared entirely. It may be because he's not trying to beat his record right now, but maybe (crossing fingers!) he's learned just a little bit about dealing with frustration. It feels kind of strange to be proud of my son for spending lots of time on a silly computer game, but I am.
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