The key to making games productive is NOT to buy them for your children :). Or at least make it a rare event. When I was a kid, my parents refused to buy me a

The key to making games productive is NOT to buy them for your children :). Or at least make it a rare event. When I was a kid, my parents refused to buy me a machine good enough to play the games I wanted. As a result, I got scrappy and found a way to piece together a computer that was decent enough to play at least "something". The main game I was interested in was the infamous "Star Control II". I was able to social engineer my mother to nag my father into bringing home a dusty 386 that was in his office so he could "work from home". It was weak sauce but back then you had stacks of manuals to read, and I spent endless hours "tweaking" and learning everything to get things to run. Scrapping ancient free hardware from my “rich” friends. Little did I know I was learning valuable skills. Before long I was building computers for the whole neighborhood, went on to be a CS major and now do large scale software. Make the kid earn the fun.