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A Farm Kid’s Relationship With Video Games…

Only help them embrace who they are October 6, 2024

It’s all about farming…

When I first started understanding the Internet and YouTube videos—probably around 2012—the kids were young. I remember one of the first things I let them watch on my computer screen was farming videos. They were hooked.

They loved them – everything from tractors to big rigs and even farm dioramas – they were watching.

And then, one Saturday, about a year later, I glanced into the living room after cleaning up from breakfast, and the kids were glued to the iPad, all three of them—they were watching this video called “Farm Sim Saturday.”  It was this guy playing a Farming Simulator video game. They loved it! 

I was like, “What the heck?!”

Fast-forward a few years, probably to 2017, when I broke down and got an Xbox for them one Christmas. 

Was there any question about what game they wanted?  

Absolutely not!  All they talked about was this Farming Simulator. 

Farming Simulator: It started with that, and it will end with that.

Over the years, it has been heart-warming to listen to them play with their cousins and talk about farming.  They strategize.

They plan, grow, bank, buy, choose to farm in different parts of the country, produce various crops, so on and so forth. 

What they are doing is practicing.

They are practicing real-life farming with each other. I love listening to it. I cherish the fact that it allows them to stay connected through farming with their cousins during the times of year when they aren’t working with each other day to day in the summer. 

During the school year, after their practices and homework is done, they want to hop on and “farm” with each other. They get the phone set up with Facetime, and away they go, each on their computer screens, talking away, about their Farming Simulator farm. 

No matter what, a farm kid will always farm.  

What Farming Simulator, in particular, has allowed them to do, is work through some of the challenges they hear their father, uncles, and grandparents discussing every day, just virtually.  It gets them one step closer to the real thing, when they will be working alongside each other every day, out on the farm, in the farm office, making some of the big decisions that will steer their farming business into the future.  Together.

Surprisingly, the technology, the video game, gets them talking even more.  The backbone to any successful business is communication, and honestly, who would have thought that a video game could have that power.

Here’s to Farming Simulator, coming from a mom who has never been about video games, and never will be…except for this one!  LOL

Have a great week!

With Love, 
Kate


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