tl;dr: Understanding how gaming might be addressing unmet needs for kids helped me wrestle with how to parent a gaming generation. The Pandemic Gaming Acceleration Coronavirus ended the screen-time debate. Screens won. This pandemic-era New York Times headline definitely extends to video games at my house. Games suddenly became my 3rd grader’s primary activity when school and afterschool were abruptly cancelled. When the closure seemed temporary, this seemed like a nice opportunity to indulge (remember that time when we got to play Minecraft for two weeks straight?
tl;dr: The Outschool platform has been a great solution for compelling and highly interactive mini-courses for my kids. Suddenly my 8 year old has had a lot of extra time on his hands and nowhere to go. What’s a working parent to do to? Meet Outschool - our best discovery of the pandemic so far! Outschool is a site where teachers offer live mini-courses for kids online on a vast array of topics.
tl;dr: The Greenlight card and app has been a great solution for auto-managing my kids’ allowance and spending. $5/month for up to 5 kids. The Solution Greenlight offers accounts for kids that are associated with a debit card and an app. The app allows parents to set up automatic transfers to kids’ accounts, and allows kids to see and manage their own money in different buckets. They also have a bunch of other useful features.