How the Plants vs Zombies Game made our 6-year old eat more Vegetables
Like many other kids, our 6-year old son can survive on a diet of ‘bread and meat’. If you are a parent, you would agree that making your children eat Vegetables (except potato chips/french fries) could be listed as a parenting challenge.
When our little one slipped into this picky-eating habit, my wife, an Occupational Therapist (who works with children on a daily basis) had to do something. Most children want a reward for accomplishing a task; when they like the reward very much, a behaviour change happens and a new habit is formed. Enter Plants vs Zombies (PVZ). My wife and I used to play this tower defence video game in 2010 before our little one was born. She had to revisit the game now to make our son interested in vegetables.
For those who know how Plants vs Zombies (PVZ) work, skip this paragraph. You have a mission to stop an army of Zombies advancing toward your house. You have to fight the Zombies by planting and growing different plants (yep, no machine-guns kids!) in your backyard garden. Each vegetable/plant has specific resource needs (solar power) and fighting abilities and so you need to choose your plants carefully before the zombie attack begins. If your chosen plants fail, the zombies will reach your home and eat your brains. Of course, it involves strategies and tricks as you have limited choice of plants to choose from (based on resources that you accumulate) and a variety of challenging zombies (Bucket-head zombie, Football zombie, Surfer zombie, Dancing zombie to name a few) to fight against.
Our son was hooked onto PVZ as it is a visually stimulating game with lovable ‘cartoonistic’ vegetables and their animations while fighting the zombies (Thanks Rich Werner!). On weekdays, the total game time is about 30 minutes, after-school. On weekends, the total game time may stretch up to an hour (in two or three sessions). It is a perfect Mum-n-Me time for my wife and our little one. They enjoy discussing game strategies such as which plants to choose, when to use power-ups to beat the zombies.
Using the PVZ concepts, we constructed a parallel between zombies and the ‘germs (bad bacteria) in the guts’ i.e., Plants vs Germs. If you eat veggies, they will fight germs and keep you healthy. Each vegetable/plant has similar powers as in PVZ to fight the germs that may cause harm to your body. We used the same names that are used in the Plants vs Zombies game to reinforce the Plants vs Germs concept and also to make it fun. While shopping at the market, my son would excitedly call out the substituted PVZ names for fruits and vegetables. For instance, we named all the greens (leaves) as Chard Guard (looks like Silver Beet), Cauliflower is CauliPower, Bok Choy is Bonk-choy, Snow Peas — Pea Shooters, Beet root — Phat beet, Potatoes — Spudow, Corn — Kernel Pult, Cabbage Pult, Coconut Canon, TallNut, Onion — Stunion, Carrot — Intensive Carrot, Strawberries — Straw-burst, Grapes — Grapeshot, Cherries — Cherry bomb, Mushroom — Doomshroom, Hypnoshroom, Sunshroom, Apple — AppleMortar, Blueberry — Electric Blueberry, Pumpkin — JackoLantern, Lettuce — Iceberg Lettuce and so on.
We introduced one vegetable a day and convinced our junior to eat it so it can go and fight the bad germs lurking in the gut. Did my son like it and start eating Vegetables straight-away? Nope, definitely not! He would admire vegetables, do the shopping but when it came to eating, he detested them. So, he had to see the consequence! My wife deleted the first PVZ game from the device and our little one did not have his favourite game for two weeks!
After another fresh agreement and promise from our little one, we installed PVZ2 (Plants vs Zombies 2) and this time, he gave a try and stomach the Vegetable, and after a few trials, my son would start liking that vegetable. On refusal, my better-half would gently threaten that the refused vegetable will not co-operate (play well) in the PVZ2 game. When this did not work, the consequence would be losing the game time or PVZ2 game itself. So, it worked this time. Compared to last year, my son is eating more variety of vegetables and fruits. I hope this healthy eating habit will continue as he grows, even when he loses interest in the PVZ game.
On a related note, I used to read a bedtime story book Bacteria Joe: Motivating Your Child to Brush Their Teeth to reinforce Twice-Daily brushing routine and it worked as well. I suggest you try this story or play-based approach with your child to instil desired behaviours and good habits. Choose a story or activity that your children is excited about. After all, we did create Santa Claus and Easter Bunny for creating good behaviour in young children :-)
All the names, characters of Plants vs Zombies copyright belong to PopGap Games and Electronic Arts. This post is NOT sponsored by PopGap games or Electronic Arts.
