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Feb. 1, 2024

Helping Children Navigate Esports

Helping Children Navigate Esports

Esports is one of the areas rapidly growing, with teens mostly signing on. To help your child be a part of this, they need to understand that it is more of a discipline now and not just mashing buttons, sitting behind screens for long hours and not doing any other activities. In fact to help them be a part of this, they are to be able to make a balance with activities – doing well in school, spending time with family, and exercising. Should this translate into persistence and determination, with a strong desire for improvement, then we can be looking at helping them develop this into careers.

Much like traditional sports, esports requires team effort from players, analysts, coaches, management teams,etc, with representation of skill levels across the local and regional competitions, all the way to varsity leagues and global organizations. And with knowledge around this, children are bound to develop a want to dive deep into this.

So what can you do as a parent to support your child should you find out that they are developing an interest in esports? 

Photo credit: Law In Sport

Do Some Research On Games They Love

It would be helpful to know why your child will be engrossed with some particular games – storyline, graphics, playability levels – and so researching about the game will help you as the parent know what skills are required to help them improve, alongside having knowledge on how it is played competitively. The Family Gaming Database by Andy Robertson, author at GeekDad (@GeekDadGamer on Twitter) is a resource that can help with providing information about games, with all details you will need.  

Photo credit: bbva.ch

Playing The Games They Love

This may sound tasking to do if you are a busy parent, but it weaves well from the previous point to do since you now have adequate knowledge about what games they are, ratings, as well as playability. You do not have to be very good at it; just dabbling a bit in how it goes will be helpful to bond with your children and understand what they are doing when you see them play. And who knows?! Should you develop interest as they have, you too can become good enough to call them out for a few rounds! (See how easy it is you can become involved haha!)

Photo credit: Business of Esports

Read More About Esports

To help you understand esports as activity, you will need to tap into some resources/literature such as “Esports: The Ultimate Guide” and “The World of Esports (The Best of Gaming)”, which will help with more on how to get your child to sign up for competitive gaming and clear the misconceptions you may have had with esports. 

Photo credit: Your Teen Magazine

Seek Support

Talking to other parents about esports is a really important thing to do. This will help you identify which support groups of parents whose children are into esports are available from the conversations had. This can help in navigating the stages they are in their esports journey as well as equipped with the understanding of these stages. Organizations such as Esports Management Group and their Children’s Initiative department can help with offering children in esports the needed support.

With these factors considered, your child’s beginner journey will have pointers to look on to to help them out immensely while you as parent also monitor the process – growth, improvement, determination. 

 

Esports has helped create jobs for lots of people. Interested in knowing about the business side of esports? Listen to the Gamers Change Lives Podcast! We get experienced guests from all around the world featuring. 

Gamers Change Lives Podcast

Written by Jeffrey Osei-Agyeman