The ever-excellent Gamers With Jobs has a new article called 'A Preschooler Primer for Parents', and it deals with one of these important things that doesn't get discussed enough - how to correctly interface games and small children.

As writer Sean "Elysium" Sands notes, kids have different ways of having fun in games: "You’re not going to teach your four year-old to appreciate the finer points of Civilization IV, and nor should you bang your head against that particular wall, so don’t overburden yourself with the idea that gaming with a young person has to involve plot points, solvable puzzles or even rules."

In addition, and this is even more of an important point: "While I am offering suggestions for how to keep a toddler or preschooler entertained, it really isn’t a substitution for your participation. For my son, he has a limitless desire to share every little thing with me no matter how insignificant it is nor the Herculean efforts I need go through to seem like I’m interested. The whole point here probably shouldn’t be to _always_ drop your kid in front of Beautiful Katamari so you can balance the checkbook, play World of Warcraft or get stinking drunk." Or all three!