Pokemon as a Bonding Experience

I have a four-year-old son, and there are a few things we like to do together, but most of them involve sitting on a couch or, worse, sitting on the floor where I'll either get back pain or rug burn on my elbows. We like binge watching animated series on Netflix. We graduated from Transformers RescueBots to what he calls the "real" Transformers, which is actually Transformers: Prime. We have enjoyed Tumble Leaf and WordWorld, SuperWhy and Star Wars Clone Wars, animated, but what he loves most of all is playing with Hot Wheels or dinosaurs, which usually end up stomping me in some way or another, and I give up after 20 minutes of kneeling or sitting on our basement floor, which stems from me being lazy and sedentary at work and from having minor back issues since I sat hunched over a desk writing a thesis and then, a couple of years later, a dissertation.

So that's what we do - we play with Hot Wheels or dinosaurs for about 20 minutes until I can't find a way to sit without some part of me going numb, and then we watch TV, or he watches YouTube and I watch the news or I mess around with social media.

Something needed to change, and PokemonGo has been incredibly promising. My son will sit on my shoulders and hold my smartphone and hit PokeStops and catch most of the pokemon we come across. If it's a rare one he might ask me to catch it, but my whole strategy is simple: feed it a razz berry and try a Great Ball. We're not pros, but we've hit level 15 and he evolved an Eevee into a Vaporeon this morning, so we were both kind of excited about that.

When we walk around and look, I'm able to get some exercise, and he's able to accomplish something small with his screen time. He doesn't get exhausted walking in the muggy summer heat, and I don't walk into traffic because he's looking at the app the whole time. He is learning some basic concepts in terms of sorting and saving candies, poke balls, stardust, and when we do get to a gym and I do battle he cheers me on and gets some rudimentary strategy ideas (thanks to my rudimentary fighting skills).

Another highlight of our day is when I pick him up from daycare and I've caught a couple of rare ones on my lunch break. I work on a college campus, so I can walk around and hit about 10-12 poke stops, eat and try to catch a couple of rare ones all within an hour or less.

I guess it's trading one kind of back pain for another, but for some reason I don't mind walking around with him on my shoulders the way I dislike sitting on the carpet trying to set up Hot Wheels tracks. God knows we have enough Hot Wheels and spend enough time watching Netflix and YouTube. PokemonGo at least has its own mythos and sense of humor, strategy and exercise element.

The only downside is when I miss a catch he lets me know how disappointing it is. Of course, that kind of adds to the fun, and I never said I was perfect. I just try to be a good dad and to do stuff with him that he enjoys and that get us both out of the house as the sun is setting and the Rattatas are turning into Ghastlies. It's usually the hour before his bath/snack/book/bedtime that we do this, and it helps tire us both out and wind down the day.

I'm not losing tens of pounds or pants sizes, and I'm not spending money on the game, but we are doing something I think he'll remember for years and we have a common goal , common enemies and a newfound interest in public art and local points of interest.