Guide for Parents Playing Minecraft With Your Kids

Playing Minecraft with your kids can be a great learning and bonding experience. Currently Minecraft is one of the most popular games in the world and it doesn’t show any signs of losing that status. Sandbox games like Minecraft appeal to so many different people that it’s enjoyable for young kids or adults allowing many parents to play the game with their kids. With so many multiplayer options a world can be shared with a few players at home or thousands of players online.

This category is to help parents who wanting to start playing Minecraft with their kids. This isn’t really a new player guide, there’s plenty of those out there already that cover almost everything. I will however be sharing tips that will be helpful to new players when I can.  Whether it’s your own kids, siblings, nieces and nephews, or an educational group hopefully this will be a great resource. The majority of this will be about playing in a Survival world, but we also setup some games in a creative world for practicing.

Some basic tips for getting started-

• The kids Characters will die… A lot. Just accept it before even starting a survival world with them. They will find every ravine, lava pool, deep cave, or other catastrophe possible.
• Plan for the extra time – Plan for at least twice the amount of time to do a build compared to what it would normally take. If you stick with a certain style of building or are playing with older kids they will pick it up pretty quickly. When playing with 5-8 year olds it can get frustrating if you start with the mindset of doing a 30 minute build and an hour into it you’re only halfway done.
• Setup ways to quickly recover from deaths. We’ve all experienced the disappointment and “rage quits” from dying in lava or in an area that we can’t recover easily from. Disappointment is a part of life and something that is good for kids to deal with but there are ways to ease the pain. Teach them to save their best equipment for when it is needed and setup XP farms to provide a quick way to boost their levels back up and regain some cool equipment. Can’t fix or replace everything.
• Setup their own areas. Just like in real life having their own room, house, or castle to build on or break down can help them be more involved. Otherwise, it is just your world and they won’t be as interested in playing. It also helps them to experiment in a certain area rather than breaking something you just built.

I’ll be adding to this with a series of articles that will be linked below and give more information about each topic. Just like anything else with kids, there are always differences. Some of the things that have worked for me won’t work for others, but I hope you can use as much as possible. The main thing is to have fun with it and enjoy the extra time together.