Monday, September 29, 2008

Gambling for kids

Well, we took Eli and 3 of his friends to Chuck E. Cheese for his birthday on Sunday. It is sort of a pizza place, but mostly an arcade for little kids. I had some coupons for pizza and tokens. Amazingly enough, the boys did eat and not just play games. We spent a couple of hours there and finally decided that places like this are like gambling for kids.

Why? Here is my reasoning...

1) Definite overstimulation - sounds, lights, movement - very similiar to a casino.

2) The kids can keep playing with tokens and "win" tickets for great prizes (bouncy balls and plastic toys that break before you get home). It is this hope of winning the keeps them coming back to the table begging for more tokens!

3) My daughter just had to conquer this game called the flaming finger - she admitted that it was addicting as she just kept adding tokens until she won. And then she wanted to win again after she had felt that euphoric feeling.

Anyway, it doesn't matter. The kids had fun and were occupied for a couple of hours - and not dirtying my house.

So, Happy Birthday ELI!

2 comments:

Liza on Maui said...

Belated happy Birthday Eli.

My son enjoyed Chuck E. Cheese when he and his dad went there on Honolulu. We don't have one on Maui yet :)

Susanne said...

My kids loved Chuck E. Cheese. It's a good thing there wasn't one in our city, so it was like a once a year treat when we went to the bigger city for holidays.

P.S. You haven't been showing up in my bloglines for awhile as evidenced by this super late comment on this post. Bloglines has been having problems with lots of sites.