Any Parents?

[Raiyen]

Anyone else a parent on here? If so how do YOU play WoW with a child?

I just had my first (and hopefully only) child back in January. It is starting to get a bit easier now since he is 2 months old, but he tends to want attention/food/diaper change RIGHT as I get into a raid or dungeon. lol I am sure it will be a bit easier when he gets a little bit older and can start amusing himself with toys and such.

[Sarayana]

Congrats on becoming a parent!!

My husband and I started playing while we were pregnant. We were raiding several nights a week when he was born, and we actually didn't have to interrupt that much. We'd ask for a quick afk while we set up the nursing pillow and then just continue playing while he drank/slept in my lap.

We don't get much playing done while he's awake, of course, but then the day time isn't usually prime playing time in our house. But he's in bed by 8, so if we want we have lots of hours to play then. The hardest time was probably when he was just learning to fall asleep on his own. We'd have to go in many times during the evening to settle him back down. Now that he's got that down, it's a breeze.

It's a lot of fun now--he's almost 4 and is showing a lot of interest. He loves the character creation screen, helps me create my transmog looks and likes to make my characters jump and fly around. He has about 10 characters scattered across our three accounts.

As a slight aside, we've had to deal with questions like "why are we killing the wolves, mommy?" We decided to do the fairytale thing (our toons are heroes, evil has to be vanquished to protect the people, that kind of thing) but we did struggle a bit to explain the "killing is ok in the game" thing.

[Raiyen]

Thank you!! Was defiantly a big change! I love my chunky monkey though! (He really is chunky O_O He is only 2 months old and already weighs 16lbs lol)

Yay! That is neat he is showing interest in it. I hope our son does since my husband and I are both gamers, though my husband is not into WoW. (I am trying to convert him bawhahaha)

I haven't mastered him being in my lap and me being able to play yet. :c I usually sit on the couch with my laptop either in my lap or if he is in it, it is sitting on a food tray thing and it is hard to reach my keyboard. Though sometimes I run around with just using my mouse hand. Not very good unless I am solo'ing low lvl stuff. xD

I didn't think about the questions. o-o Guess he won't be watching my husband play call of duty...Skyrim and Minecraft maybe, but none of his other games. I rather avoid those questions. lol

[Sarayana]

Eh, those questions are going to come regardless. My son is fully aware that my grandfather died recently and that he only has one grandma (my mother-in-law died before he was born, so it's just sort of a fact around the house). It comes in waves, suddenly there's a keen interest and then it's something else. Besides, he's gotta learn somehow, right? Better to let him ask the questions and answer honestly and help him deal with these difficult ideas than have him struggle to make sense of it on his own.

We raided at the dining room table, it worked perfectly with this nursing pillow I had that was full of tiny packaging foam beads. I agree, on the couch it can get hard to balance everything.

My son also really loves the wii, btw! He plays the sport resort, which leaves him breathless and sweating after a good hour of doing sword fighting or ping pong or whatever. Plus it has most definitely helped him hone is motor skills. Win/win! (And an extra win for keeping him occupied so mommy can run a heroic. )

[cowmuflage]

I'm not a parent but if you want to ever talk about like adult stuff you can allways use the Female Reproductive Health thread. Just putting it out there and stuff.


Gratz on the baby btw!

[Ceravan]

My baby girl is 2 now, and still a handful, she's definitely a daddy's girl... she has apparently pvp/tank detector cause she'll almost always drop what she's doing to come hang out... all over my lap. She has a tendency to take over one or both my arms and squirms a lot, I just play through it or sit back and relax and play with her instead, always a different raid around the corner, always a different bg some other time.

[Gayia]

My son is 4 - he does help me a lot

He used to be my little "Anti-AFK-bot" when I was camping Time Lost. He would come every 20 minutes and jump so I do not go afk.
He also helped with camel figurines - I would put marks where he should fly (Tom Tom) and he was flying around Uldum - flying over every dot marked on map.
He is fishing for me, mining and gathering herbs.

I guess that makes me bad and lazy mum

[Schwert]

I'm far too young to even consider it nor do I ever really want to.
I have enough trouble taking care of myself and the thought of it...
Heebie Jeebies.

However - When I was younger ((8-9ish I think.)) me and my mother used to play Diablo 2 together and it was a big bonding experience.
We fight a lot now however she came to me the other day and told me she'd like to try Diablo 3.

Going to see if Blizzard will allow my "free" copy of D3 to be separate from my CE instead of game-time for her.

[Makoes]

Ah, My daughter is turning 2yrs on April 11th. When she was smaller, it was in some ways more easy to play, since I didnt have to worry about her getting into things or stucking stuff up her nose (yay we're at THAT stage). I would sometimes place her in a baby bjorn and have her on my chest sleeping while I played, or had her sleeping in her bassinet by my feet. As she got older and started moving around more, I had to focus more on playing while she slept, and then playing with her while she was awake.

Which is pretty much what I do now. She generally goes down for quiet time/nap at about 2pm and gets up between 5pm and 6pm. so I've got a nice daytime slot for wow there, though my guild tends to start raids at 5pm...

Then she goes down for the night at 9pm, and the rest of the evening is mine...and cleaning...lol. Sometimes I can get away with raiding while she's up provided I have either enough healthy munchies to keep her distracted, or she's zoned out on treehouse (little kids cartoon channel)

[Tufak]

Daddy to four year old twins here. My computer is in the same room as where they spend most of their day (big rec room/bedroom for my spouse and I), so I mostly just stay logged in and play when they're busy with other things. I'm AFK a lot, though.

Back when they were tiny, my raid was nice enough to set up breaks based on when they needed to be fed. It just meant I had to talk to the raid leader in advance, then my partner and I would both run AFK when it was time (the family that plays together, stays together).

If WoW is still around when they hit age 8, I plan to get them each a trial account so they can have characters up to level 20 and we can all play together.

[Worba]

Anyone else a parent on here? If so how do YOU play WoW with a child?

I just had my first (and hopefully only) child back in January. It is starting to get a bit easier now since he is 2 months old, but he tends to want attention/food/diaper change RIGHT as I get into a raid or dungeon. lol I am sure it will be a bit easier when he gets a little bit older and can start amusing himself with toys and such.

Grats on your son!

As you've noticed in the beginning while they are breastfeeding babies will tend to make it tough to group, raid or BG - people manage it, but it's not usually seamless.

Somewhere around age 2-4 once they're sleeping relatively regularly and are potty trained, things get easier. You still run the risk of having to stop wow to deal with "accidents", nightmares, or etc but at least in my experience those things are not super common and tend to diminish with time.

Bottom line though as others have said - your child will not stay a child forever, and you want to enjoy that phase while it's here. Whereas there will always be another raid or bg.