The very first video game I ever played was Zelda: A Link To The Past. I was 5 years old and my parents dug out their old SNES for me to experience video games for the first time. I came home from school and my parents were all giddy and like “you’re gonna FLIP when you see this”. I had never even HEARD of video games before. And my parents broke out the SNES with Zelda and Mario and Street Fighter and it was so special to me.
And I also like how they made sure to hold off on the digital media intake until my brain was at least a little bit developed. Sure I watched TV sometimes but my biggest form of media intake was like. Hooked on Phonics and Richard Scarry books. They at least waited for me to have some sort of puzzle solving skills before they turned me loose on Zelda.
They also homeschooled me baby-Einstein-style until I was 5 so like. I could read at about a 3rd grade level in kindergarten. I could count past 100 because my dad showed me how to count on a tape measure. I got in trouble when I was 6 for teaching the other kindergarteners fractions and multiplication. My parents might have been shit in a lot of ways but I do think they did a good job developing my brain early on
