Playing Video Games with a 3 Year Old

A few days ago my 3-year-old grandson came over and wanted to play video games with me. He loves cars and so I gave him a PS3 controller while I played a racing game on the PS4. He didn't know that he wasn't really controlling the car on the TV and enjoyed our short time together playing the game. I would tell him to hold one of the triggers down to make the car go faster. Then I would look at what he did and made sure to match his actions. We both cheered when we won the game and received a trophy for our accomplishment.

A few days later he came over and wanted to play a new game on the PS5. I sat him on my lap and gave him a 2nd controller while I controlled the game. Every so often I would tell him to press the square button and then matched his movement to coincide. The game requires the player to move the controller around and it makes me smile as my grandson mimics my actions. We gather coins and collected PlayStation artifacts in "Astro's Playroom." Since we play as a robot, my grandson calls it "the robot game." Now every time he comes over he wants to play the robot game.

"Astro's Playroom" is the free game included with all PlayStation 5 consoles. I have to say that I enjoy playing it with him. While I could easily finish the game, I wait for him to come over before trying new areas in the game. He is also getting pretty good at hitting the square button to punch the bad robots and pressing the X button to jump. I have to pay close attention to him but if I do it right, he really thinks he is playing. My favorite is when a bad robot jumps out and surprises him. He gets excited and squeals anxiously.

Unfortunately it won't take my grandson long to figure out he isn't controlling the video game and he will want to play for real. My hope is that I have given him enough training so that he will be able to pick up the game movements and not get frustrated. Until then we are having fun playing games together and plan to do a lot of that during the Thanksgiving holiday. I imagine he will take over and be better than me by Christmas.