Train 'em young

It is important to begin training very young if you want your child to excel at a particular field.  Starting practice at age 4 is a good spot if you want your young progeny to excel in some field of endeavour and the field I choose for Elli is of course killing pixel monsters and taking their stuff.

Wendy and I are beginning Elli's training regimen with Plants vs. Zombies.  If you are a professional PvZ player you will note that the depicted arrangement of resources in the war of chlorophyll vs. animated flesh is poor - Elli is just beginning and her strategy is more random than good.  However, she has grasped the mechanics of clicking on the sun to get resources and putting things on the screen and is very interested in squashing zombies so I feel confident that with training and discipline she can become an excellent player.  Her greatest challenges at this point are mostly in the interface since the mouse is just too large and heavy for her hands.  Maybe I need to take her to a store that specializes in equipment for aspiring monster slayers and get her set up to maximize her time spent training.

Thankfully the usual exercise of locating a reclusive master to teach the young one the deep skills required to kill things and take their stuff will not be hard as we have one such savant living in the house already.  My only fear is that someday I must see her click on some awesome new stuff and realize that she is better than me and that I cannot kill that dude and I will never be able to get that stuff for myself.  Such is the risk of trying to be the old master in someone else's movie.