Very interesting. These two articles explain a few things for me: 1. Why I can't ever seem to get into video games (or games in general). 2. Why the hobbies I

Very interesting. These two articles explain a few things for me: 1. Why I can't ever seem to get into video games (or games in general). 2. Why the hobbies I do enjoy use skills that are difficult to acquire and take a lot of effort to master. 3. Why we have such a hard time motivating our son to practice viola and stick to martial arts. Most of the reward he's heard over the years has come in the form of, "Wow, you're really smart." As a verbally gifted child, he has already acquired an expansive vocabulary that impresses adults. Zero effort for him; big payoff. 4. And, possibly, why our daughter seems to be acquiring skills at a faster clip than the boy does. She seems to have tapped into that other kind of reward, for effort. Makes me wonder if this has anything to do with the remarkably different response people have expressed to her verbal abilities, which is typically criticism. If you're curious, both of our children play video games, but the boy is a great deal more "into" them than the girl. Where he will use up all of his computer time and beg for more, I've seen her go days without using the computer at all. Video games are a political hot button for parenting; like watching television, the kind of parent you are is open to public scrutiny based on how many hours per day you let your kid engage in the activity, or even at all. You don't have to be a parent to see the value of achievement in habilitation, but it does help. I've met my share of 30-yr-old gamers who still live in their parents' basements. Personally, I believe that if my kids aren't independent by 20, I'll have failed as a parent. There is a real, deep joy that you get from looking at an object you have formed with your hands or the home you've made with your salary. Even if you just sit in a cubicle. We're wired this way for a reason, right? Otherwise we'd perish. And it's not a bad idea to consider the concept of types of achievement. The advertising industry surely does. They feed us this tripe and most of us eat it without bothering to sniff it first.