Covering videogames for a mainstream publication like Newsweek, we often feel like priests. Why? Because our colleagues will periodically pull us aside to confess their videogame experiences, or, more often, those of their children. We, in turn, solemnly hear their confessions, offer our infallible advice, then urge them and their loved ones to go forth and game some more. We had one such conversation with NEWSWEEK Assistant Managing Editor Kathy Deveny, wherein she recounted her quest for a DS Lite for her daughter, and her subsequent observations about her child's gaming habits. She agreed to share them with us; enjoy.

When my six-year-old daughter, Jing Jing, emailed Santa last November asking for not just a videogame player, but a Nintendo DS--specifically, a pink Nintendo DS Lite--I was pretty amused. How did she even know about Nintendo, let alone that the DS came in pink? She didn't get it from me. I'm not even good at Brick Breaker. But I liked the fact that she was growing up in a world where technology was all around her and that she was absorbing it naturally. I thought it was cool when she hovered around an all-boys group after a birthday party, angling to get her turn on the handheld they were passing around. That was just the kind of boys' club I had always wanted to crack. So what if other parents of kids her age fretted that violent videogames would turn their children into psychotic kitten killers? I was proud. My kid didn't want a Barbie; she wanted a key to the kingdom.

For days, I floated around in a DS-induced post-feminist haze, dreaming of the day when Jing would write her first lines of code. I also noticed--for the first time--that there was a GameStop just two blocks from our apartment. Perfect. I bravely walked in and asked for a pink DS. No dice. Sold out. Till after Christmas.

Crap.

One of the measures of a good colleague is their ability to inspire you. Newsweek.com creative director and Level Up Xbox 360 correspondent Rolf Ebeling recently wrote a Player Two post about his impending fatherhood, wherein he reflected on his relationship with his own father as it intersected with videogames. We found the piece both thoughtful and affecting, and with Mother's Day fast approaching, it spurred us to assemble a small package of posts examining the mother-child dynamic as filtered through the lens of interactive entertainment.

NEWSWEEK Assistant Managing Editor Kathy Deveny writes about the impact of her young daughter's Nintendo DS, while Senior Writer Peg Tyre explains why she made a conscious decision to develop her own videogame literacy. Rounding out the package is a first-ever Q&A with Level Up mother-in-chief Yvonne Croal discussing why she never allowed her children to own a console. For our part, we'd like to thank both our contributors and our interview subject, and we wish them all a very happy Mother's Day.

No, no trick questions. Growing up, you allowed us kids to have a computer, but we weren't allowed to have a videogame machine. What was your thinking behind that?

Well, in my estimation at that time, videogames were just another silly game. We certainly didn't want you to be spending 24/7 playing these games that we considered not productive in any way.

Was that based on your gut as a parent? Was it based on things you had read, things you had seen from other kids? What was going through your head?

It was my gut as a parent. I mean, now that I see what you're doing with games and what you tell me--I was not as knowledgeable about the game industry. And to be honest, even if I were as knowledgeable, I still would not have allowed you guys to have those games at will. Even if we had bought one, we would have monitored it closely. We would have had to know the content, and even after knowing the content, we still would have monitored it. You would not have been able to jump on the machine at will and play games and play games and play games and play games. That was not acceptable. It would not have been acceptable.

Growing up, you also regulated our TV consumption a lot as well. Did you view TV in the same light as games, as something that you had to monitor both the amount we were taking in--

Definitely--

--as well as the content?

Mother's Day is coming up. And when I'm done opening my present (bath products) and putting my spring bouquet in a vase, I may well end up picking up a videogame controller with my son. That's right. I'm a forty-something mother and there's a good chance that I'm going to play videogames with one of my sons this weekend.

I'm not drawn to them. I can think of about ten things off the top of my head I'd rather do. In fact, I curse the whole idea of them every time I trip over the console, which, inexplicably, seems to migrate from the TV to the floor whenever the lights go out. But among their other activities, my kids like videogames. They like them a lot. They talk about them, think about them, play with them and spend (too much) money on them.

Like many parents, I harshly limit the time they can spend playing. They can only watch screens of any nature--TV, video or Game Boy--before 10 a.m. Saturday and Sunday mornings and between 8 and 10 on Friday and Saturday nights. Still, I feel like it's part of my obligation as a parent to dip my toe into their world. So once in a while, I play videogames with them.

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