Studies claim playing video games can help children’s development (Picture: Alamy)

It sounds like every child’s dream.

One fine day, your parents tell you that you don’t have to go to school any more and that you can spend as much time as you like playing video games.

But for two boys on a farm in Wisconsin, this is no dream.

Two years ago, US blogger and career coach Penelope Trunk pulled her two sons out of school to educate them at home.


However, their education is a little bit different. Her sons, aged 7 and 10, are essentially allowed to play when they want to play.

‘I let my kids do whatever they want so they learn how to figure out what they want to do,’ she told Metro.



‘They choose to play video games all day. So they don’t learn math, they don’t learn reading, they don’t learn anything. They just do what they want to do and what they want to do right now is video games. I spend a lot of time making sure that I can stomach that.’

While this scenario may sound astonishing to many parents, Ms Trunk has her reasons.

‘The most important thing we need to learn in order to be human is to know what we like and what’s fulfilling for us. To me, that’s the number one thing you have to teach kids.

‘The way you teach them that is you let them choose what they want to do with their days. If you give kids complete freedom, they don’t let themselves be bored. Kids are naturally curious and natural learners.

‘Video games are important because that’s generally what boys will choose to do if you give boys enough respect to let them teach themselves what they like to do. Video games are our path to developing boys who will be successful in life.’

Her sons spend their gaming time on Minecraft and other building and strategy games, but that doesn’t mean it’s all play and no work.

Both children run their own businesses from the family farm near Darlington, Wisconsin. One sells goats and pigs and the other sells eggs. It’s only time for video games once their chores are completed.

Unlike many parents, Ms Trunk doesn’t believe video games are bad for children. And she isn’t the only one.

There is an increasing school of thought that says the gamers of today are the game changers of tomorrow.

Increasingly, most of the jobs out there involve managing data and making quick decisions. What better way to prepare for this than a misspent (or well-spent) youth playing video games?

A study last month by Nanyang Technological University in Singapore published in scientific journal PLOS ONE found that playing video games makes us more focused and improves spatial memory.

Earlier this year, research by the University of Padua in Italy showed that playing video games such as Rayman Raving Rabbids improved the reading speed and attention spans of dyslexic children.



A study by researchers at Michigan State University published at the end of 2011 said video games made children more creative when it came to writing stories and drawing pictures after playing.

In a recent blog post entitled, ‘Kids who play video games do better as adults’, Ms Trunk drew attention to research from Iowa State University which said doctors made fewer mistakes during surgery after playing video games for at least three hours a week.

She said her children have learned all sorts of things from playing video games.

‘If you let a boy sit in a room all day playing video games, it’s more educational than putting them in school,’ she said.

‘Anything that a little boy does is educational. My kids learn to type on video games, they learn to read – I didn’t teach them to read – they learn to read playing video games.

‘Their best friend lives in Pakistan, so they’ve learned all about Pakistan and time zones because they have to synchronise their gaming.

‘They learn about money because video games are a racket and you have to buy tonnes of stuff in order to keep up.’

Ms Trunk said video games had helped her sons become more independent. She insists that a school environment doesn’t help child development.

‘People who can’t figure out what to do at work by themselves get fired.

‘Self-directed learning is how kids learn best. School isn’t self-directed learning because there are 30 kids in a classroom.


‘Sitting in front of a video game console all day is self-directed learning. Playing video games all day is more beneficial to a kid’s development than sitting in school all day.

‘We send kids to school at this point because it’s free babysitting. Putting kids in school is just a result of the industrial age when we had to get kids out of factories and we had nowhere to put them.’

She said the collaborative skills that children use during gaming – such as trying to figure out how to reach higher levels through consulting YouTube videos and conversing with other players – are frowned upon in the classroom.

‘You have a generation of kids where there are two classes. There’s one class of kids who are really good at collaboratively searching and leveraging information online.

‘Then you have another set of kids who were told that collaboration is cheating and searching is not doing schoolwork and so they don’t have any skills for the workplace.’

Dr Mark Griffiths, professor of gambling studies and director of the International Gaming Research Unit at Nottingham Trent University, said there are many benefits for children who play video games. He said video games help children set goals and stimulate learning.

He said: ‘Parents who have not played video games themselves often pathologise their kids’ behaviour, as they either don’t understand or feel it is a complete waste of time and that they should be doing something more “productive” with their time.


‘Video games may sometimes have a contributory role in socially unacceptable behaviour but there is little evidence that moderate video game playing has any ill effects on children’s behaviour.

‘It is only very excessive playing that may have some impact on aggressive behaviour, addictive tendencies and medical consequences.’

Ms Trunk believes the argument that video games make children violent is a lazy one.

She said: ‘There’s no evidence that violence in video games begets violence at home. The ubiquitous violence in our society makes us unable to put the correlation directly to video games.’

Her children aren’t playing PEGI 18 games anyway, she said.

‘When we’re talking about little boys sitting at home playing video games all day, they’re not playing first-person shooter – they’re little boys.’