For my family that question has many answers. Yesterday my 4 and 2 year olds started the day with playing Reader Rabbit Kindergarten where they worked on letter sounds and basic words. Then my 7 year old got on the computer and played a game for her age where she was working on phonograms and sentence structure with my 9 year old watching over her shoulder. Later all the girls went outside to jump on the trampoline and play "house." In their imaginary world one is "Mom" and the others are "Sister" or they are friends or other characters just living through a normal day - when my boys do this kind of play there are always explosions, secret agents and shooting in one form or another, just one of those differences between boys and girls.
While the girls were off in their own world, my 11 year old played Oblivion (an open world medieval game similar to World of Warcraft, but played as a single player and not online). He has been struggling with the patience required in this game. In order to accomplish missions, he has to talk to people to find the clues he needs to advance in the story. Once Damien figures out what he needs to do, he wants to do it immediately not ask around for the clues needed to figure out how to break into the castle or defeat the monster. He gets a double dose of delayed gratification skills with this game because he has to first do his chores to be able to play, then take time to figure out what to do in the game - a skill he definitely needs work on too. Then came the sharing skills as my 9 year old got a turn to play Lego Batman. For Zachery playing the game helps his hand-eye coordination (something his optometrist recommends, though I can't handle the video games every day), puzzle solving skills, money skills (collecting and spending 'studs' on characters and equipment), cooperation skills as he asks siblings to step in for a short time to help so that he doesn't have to wait for the computer to help or switch characters and delayed gratification as he saves to buy certain items. Both of the games have these kinds of lessons as well as many more (in Oblivion the thing you choose to say or do to a character will determine how much or little they will help you - if you are mean, you get less help).
Then, since it was Daddy's night out with friends, the kids finished an animated Batman movie. It was based upon a comic series, so when Daddy got home we talked about the choices that were made by the writers as well as the characters. The fans didn't like a certain character, so the writers killed him off, which shocked the fans so then the writers made this story arc to try and satisfy the fans. From what I understand it worked. The characters were not 2-dimensional, they had a past and you could see where their future was headed. Also, Batman had to face the consequences of his choices and rise above the temptation to kill a really bad guy. He ended up looking back and recognizing that while he made mistakes, he could still appreciate the good times before things fell apart and hope for a future where a certain friend would make better choices. All great discussion starters.
Since I had work to do that I had procrastinated for months, I let the kids have free reign over the tv and computer once their chores were done. Typically I don't have the tv on during the day because it distracts and bothers me and I don't think it is healthy to be in front of all day. However, there are times when the tv/computer are useful.
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