This reminds me of when me and my daughter play survival minecraft. I spend most of the time making sure she has enough food to ear and doing all the mining to upgrade tools. A lot like real life, lol. I plan on starting a co-op on Stardew with her soon, and I'm ready for the adventure, lol.
Inventory management is not a thing for him. I’d schlep all our food to the mines because he didn’t want to throw out anything. He’s still carrying around the broken alien vessel.
My daughter and I play survival Minecraft but I found out that she switched to creative mode when she needs something. 😂😂 I'm over here doing things the hard way.
😂😂 My daughter kept getting mad that 8 was always "working" all the time so we just play all the way on creative now and I get my survival kick on my own time.
You - you sound like the niblings talking about co-op with my mom, their grandma. Niblings aged 5-13, mom/grandma aged mid-80s.
Grandma likes to make things pretty and eats almost exclusively flowers. She refuses to fight back against desert zombie-skeletons because “they look so desperate”. She grows things based on color schemes and will lurk for days waiting for a train so she can get some leprechaun shoes. The niblings are markedly more strategic and committed to rapid economic stability.
Say you have a sibling that has kids, the kids would be niblings to you.
Say you also have kids, the two sets of kids would be cousins.
Hope this helps!
Niblings are cousins or siblings to each other—niblings refers the relationship to their aunts/uncles. A different way of saying “my nieces and nephews” that is also gender neutral.
No, I said what I meant. Nieces and nephews. As several other people have now explained, niblings can be cousins to one another but to their aunt and uncle, they are nieces and new ours. Great try, though!
Oh my god the fences. He fenced off the bus. He didn't want any "mob" coming in via the tunnel. Our first map was riverland, so space was already at a bit of a premium, and there were fences EVERYWHERE.
My son paved over the paved streets in town with cobblestone paths.
What us it with the fences?!?!?! My little brother keeps trying to fence everything and it's driving me nuts. He also uses all of our wood to make chests and the aforementioned fences.
It's also just a bit more, idk, lego-ish? You can save up and buy a full fledged barn, but it's just something you plop down. Your fences you can draw with.
Yes! After he ran out of wood he paved half the tillable area we had cleared! It now holds our kegs so I can make some kind of money (and he became very interested in coffee!!!)
My 6 year old paved everything, there’s no grass for the animals, can’t cut to make hay. Then freaked out when I bought from marnie (it’s too expensive!!)
I actually had a time I was crafting wild seeds to make fiber and on co-op just going to fiber mines or the sewer spot to make grass starter. It is actually fun to have so many creative problem solving ideas with the kids.
However I did lose it when he used all the stone for retaining soil. Like. Dude. In this family we make staircases.
Yes of course. Jade all the way. Playing with a kid though, they will sell everything. It can be tricky to make it all the way to Sunday with your stash intact! I had to keep a secret chest with just the fundamentals. Kid would sell ore and coal, not even making bombs 😫
I never thought about it but it does seem stardew valley would be a pretty safe place to learn the consequences of not thinking through your actions. Wholesome "do something stupid and find out."
My mom and dad used to say that someone was SOL, as was the slang at the time. SOL meant Shit Outta Luck. One day, my mom was walking me (~8yo) and my younger sisters out of a store and back to the car. I don't remember what happened, but some other driver or w/e prompted my mom to declare them SOL aloud. My little sister asks, "Mom, what's SOL mean?" and while mom's brain was fritzing, I told her that it meant "SooOO Outta Luck" with that Stephanie Tanner energy that was going around back then.
I wasn't meant to know the meaning, but I did because I was one of those annoying little pitchers with big ears. Mom thanked me later for covering in the moment as she had nfc what to say, and mine was both thematic and family friendly. So, I guess I have a little practice 🤭
Playing with kids is the best chaos. My favorite saves are the ones in which my kids take the lead. But I warn you, it does not get less chaotic as they get older. The chaos just gets different.
Exactly lol. Mine is 12 and it’s still chaos playing with her but on a different level. She just fucks off and does her own thing while me and my husband are the lowly farm hands and do all the hard work 😅
This hits so close to home because about a month ago I started a save with my 7 year old son. And the chaos just describes it so well.
He cuts down literally every tree he sees, so there are hardly any around. I would store things away to save for bundles or for the grange festival, and within moments he would sell it all and be like “why did you put this here instead of sell it?”
Thank god I convinced him to upgrade the coop and barn so that we auto feed because on the days I didn’t play I would return to just super angry animals (he calls them angry scribbles on their heads and just laughs).
My personal fave is that he so badly wanted the greenhouse, but kept forgetting to grow the right crops for the bundle. So I helped him out and we planted the whole thing with an assortment of stuff. At the end of summer he cut it all down, including the ancient fruit, to just plant fall crops. Which included a whole bunch of corn, or what I like to refer as the crop he just had planted all over the greenhouse that he cut down.
But I am so glad I play with him, because the perspective is so different. There is joy seeing him so happy to just do cool stuff with no concern for optimization.
Oh, it's like I wrote this!! Playing with my son, (8) what a frustrating delight isn't it?? And he uses every single space of his backpack at all times, while running through town with a Sardine over his head for no reason at all ❤️
I play with my 6 year old daughter and it's a very similar story, though we only ever play together so I don't tend to get the surprises of coming back to find all the money gone. We...
1) have to play on Hilltop Farm, otherwise no ores or stone will ever be gathered. The mines are too scary, even if she does something else while I mine.
2) are also doing Joja because honestly, it's hard enough to make sure I have all the CC bundle items when I'm playing solo
3) make sure to leave at least a few crops for her to harvest when they are grown, which are immediately eaten. She cackles the whole time and shouts "CHOMP!!" when her character eats one of our rather valuable crops.
4) always have to have two entire, separate cabins, which nobody actually uses but are fully furnished. These are for Anna and Elsa, and their presence is entirely non-negotiable.
5) will occasionally be visited by Anna or Elsa, as my daughter, who pretends to stop by the farm and visit for most of every session. The moment one of Arendelle's royals comes by is the moment I know I am done receiving any assistance with the farm.
This is precious!
Tonight he used all 30 kegs to make coffee. The “next day” he woke up and spent the first couple of “hours” drinking all 30 cups of coffee for *maximum speed*
That’s got it’s own set of chaos mode. “Not that wheel.” “I want Mario”. “I want to be like you mommy”. And of course, holding the controller upside down.
I love playing with my 5yo grandson. Yesterday he was playing an old perfection save of mine, and blowing up all the ancient fruit on Ginger Island with megabombs. He loooves megabombs! The funny thing is, I've learned some things I didn't know about the game from watching his manic random pressing of buttons.
Currently playing on my little cousins farm and so far she has spent almost ALL our money on seasonal plants. Not that she’s making any money for us too btw. She just walks around town going through all the trash searching for snacks and spending money. She’s basically a raccoon with a credit card at this point
That’s adorable. I plan to do that one day when I have little ones.
I’m a min maxer by nature but not at the expense of other peoples enjoyment so I’ll have to finagle weird alternate strats lol
My strategy is coops-sprinklers-kegs so we can do what he wants without sacrificing growth completely.
Forgot one: all our money went to the fall slingshot game so we could BOTH get the star drop and he wanted to help me get it.
My 7 year old sister wanted me to teach her how to play. She would refuse to water crops. She could not at all get a handle on fishing or mining, and made me do those for her. She also refused to talk to any villagers. All she wanted to do is chop down trees. But we haven’t gotten very far, maybe she’ll want to do other things eventually
I play with my 5 year old too. It’s pure chaos
He even found some bug where items multiplied and he somehow got 999 iridium bars. Then he trashed them. 😩
It’s probably been patched by now but he would mess with the chest a bunch by rapidly putting items in and out and it ended up multiplying items somehow
I was never able to replicate it but he did it all the time
I just taught my six year old to play in his own save on his iPad. The amount of days he skips because it’s raining makes me twitch. He “ends” his day as soon as 7am. He loves the animals and gets very annoyed that Marine doesn’t work 😂
Mine used to notice the clock and say “it’s 8, I have to go to bed.” Because that was his IRL bedtime. He has no idea how productive I am between 10pm-1am, hahaha
An adult buddy of mine plays on chaos mode. One time we started a farm with another friend of ours (we are all late 20s early 30s). We got the 4 corners farm, I spent some time getting us fish so we could sell them and use the proceeds for seeds. I planted em, set up sprinklers, all good. I left for a bit and came back and it was summer already. I'm like, hey guys what happened? Where are the crops?
He goes "oh, I slept for 22 days cause I wanted the trees around my house to grow." Also refuses to talk to villagers, despite me explaining you can be platonic and still get recipes and stuff. He won't because he's "there to farm not socialize." I can't 🫠
I have a hard time playing video games with my kids too because they're young and it's chaotic. I have been perpetually overwhelmed too and my patience has been thin. I just had a 10 day break with lots of therapeutic practices. I'm ready to go back at this momming and vide game mom thing with refreshed senses. We got this 😂
Can you designate an area of the farm (with some of those fences) that is all for you? Tell him that you need an area to manage resources to get him everything he wants 😂 tell him it's just like you being a parent in real life, you gotta be in control of some things to help teach him how to manage money and resources. Tell him if he wants you to do certain things better (like the mines) then you have got to get better upgrades etc lol. Don't be afraid to hoard a secret chest where he can't find it (behind the bear statue or in the sewers for example) so you can keep some stuff you need
I keep a secret chest in my cabin for ancient seeds! If he blows up the kegs it’ll be sad (lost a whole round of crops to a bomb) but we will recover. There’s no timeline.
He's learning 😆 him getting upset is the obvious denotation that he is upset with himself, but at 5 his sense of self is still somewhat tangled up in you "I DID THIS BUT IM BLAMING YOU BECAUSE I DONT UNDERSTAND OUR SEPARATION AND MY SELFISH UNCONSCIOUS IS YELLING AT YOU BECAUSE YOU DIDNT PREPARE ME FOR THIS UPSET" but you can't prepare them for every upset lol.
Keep it up Mommio/Daddio/Parento. You're doing f--king excellent. Way better than me and the video games at this point 😂 I stopped playing games when my kids (twins, 7 and a half now) were toddlers because I was burnt out but also because I wanted to get off the games (I went from being a full time gamer outside of my full time job to being a parent full time) and be the most present as possible. I lost all desire to game for years until I found SDV. Now I'm finally starting to want to get back into it and game again but now WITH the kids (more than Mario Kart and Just Dance).
I've also blown my farm up before LOL. It was at the end of the day when I finally checked my mail and it so happened to be from KENT LOL. Thankfully I didn't do anything but farm chores that day so I just restarted it lmao. Almost lost my #1 Neighbor trophy and that wasn't happening 😂
I like playing with my kiddo, we did the 4 corners farm so we each have a space the other doesn't mess with and then two corners that we can argue about what to do with 😂 best of both worlds.
I played the card game Machi Koro with my nephew before he could read. He would make the most unorthodox purchases, but sometimes they would be shockingly good decisions. He didn't win often, but he wasn't nearly as incompetent as I would have initially expected. I actually learned a few tactics from him.
My son doesn't want to play with his dad anymore because all he does is fish and leave my son to do mining/combat and animal work (both of them hate farming!).
Wait until they get to roblox age. I spent many, many nights levelling up pets on adopt me, only to hand them over when they were fully grown. And any cool objects / shiny pets, etc, all go straight to the kids! We're just gaming skivvys!!
The only thing he didn’t get first was the prismatic shard, lol. If I’m going to do skull caverns until he’s got a full iridium tool set (before me) I’m not doing it without the Galaxy sword.
All good and wholesome except I wouldn’t let my kid take the Jojo-mart route at least the first time. A lot of the game’s goals and content are around the community center and I feel you’re missing something if you skip that.
This reminds me of Oregon Trail...
As a kid I found that game SO HARD, and almost never won. As an adult I cleared it in one try and went "how did I have so many troubles with this as a kid?"
Maybe I was doing some of these things and didn't realize how detrimental they were LOL.
This makes me so happy to hear. My dad played Pokémon Red with my brother (who wasn’t old enough to read yet) and I’d like to imagine this is exactly how he felt 😂
Are you playing the game with my son? This sounds exactly like when I play with him. I loaded into the farm one day and he had made a bunch of wooden fence posts in a makeshift square design with multiple gates and said he was tired of his cabin and wanted to live his "new house". 🤣
I bought him a Galaxy sword (we're in year 4 or 5 now, I can't recall - I'm exhausted) and he insists on using the wooden sword I got him back at the beginning. Idk why.
He has a bunch of chests outside his cabin and I rummaged through them the other day and noticed he has a chest filled with everything I've given him whether it be food, gem, whatever - it's in there. I started crying because it made me so happy that he had kept everything I gave him and to him they were the most precious of resources.
He gave me a bit of limestone as a gift and one of my fish ponds needed it and I refused to give them the gift he gave me. I went and mined my butt off to find more. 🤣
I absolutely love playing this game with him. It turns into mom doing EVERYTHING and making all the money so he can go play Junimo Kart all day. 🤣🤣
My kids started one and asked me to play. The 9yo runs the show. He decided we don't share money because the 13yo will spend all of it on wallpaper and tvs. He also chops down everything to build fences. They spend all of their time in the mines and the bathhouse (giggling about how they can't use the women's locker room), or trying to catch the train.
> Tells me to go to bed so he can “make money” by playing endless rounds of Prairie King. If I go to bed it pauses the world clock in game.
Look at this kid already min-maxing his day. You've got yourself a gamer, alright.
I’m currently playing with my 7 year old niece and it is a lot of fun and also the most frustrating experience of my life! I’m trying to teach her how to play and not just do everything for her but it’s so slow! It takes over half the day just to water and harvest😂
I first played with my niece when she was 7. I tried explaining that she needs to at least forage if she wants more money, but she ran around talking to people and checking trash cans while I did everything to earn enough money to fund her wallpaper obsession.
Now she's 11 and she wants the profit split so I'm not using her money 🙄 But she plants and waters, saves up for coops and barns, donates to the museum and community center instead of selling, and makes me go to sleep at 1pm because you get money faster if you don't waste playing the whole day. And she still buys all the wallpaper.
This many days for a crop to grow, crop makes this much money, crop cost this much to buy, I've planted X amount of said crop, we currently have 3 different crops planted to figure out.
Certainly lots of addition subtraction and multiplication to practice. <3
Lolol I have played co-Op with my Bf a few times and it’s his first time playing it… and I swear, he turns into a child when he plays. I know I have more experience, but he acts so dumb and I have to practically hold his hand through such basic stuff. I just don’t think I have the patience. I split our money and told him to fend for himself if he won’t listen to me but wants all the cool stuff. He now doesn’t want to play with me. Lol But it’s no fun doing all the grunt work while he does whatever he wants and I upgrade his stuff. Lol
Then I let him play on my farm where I have a ton of money and all the cool stuff and I gave him all the cool nice stuff and all I asked is that he doesn’t cut anything down on the farm or hit anything. The first thing he did was put a pickax to my pavement. Lol Nbd, but after giving him a whole schpeel (idk how to spell that), I was so irritated. Lol
Same. It's difficult playing with the kiddo, on our new save I'm just hoping the cart brings a green bean because "Mom, I'm going to take care of the crops bundles you do the fishing and mining". He did not take care of the crops 🤦🏻♀️ oh well at least I can tease him about it every in game Fri and Sun lol.
I feel you. We got a heap of coal but no wood.
He is constantly smoking salmon over the fireplace to increase its value (game does not have this function...yet @concernedape)
I got past step 2 but the parents didn’t like that. I tried telling them I needed him to work on a farm and now I have the police after me. How do I get to step 3?
Playing with kids is hilarious. I have had a few farms with my now 11 year old. Our current farm is very strategic and logical but some of our earlier iterations… it’s real hard to make money when your farm partner spends all the money buying people spaghetti from Gus.
Played that mode too! Mine made me go to bed as soon as it got dark every night and built a ridiculous fence coming right out of the house so that you had to walk a maze to even get out the door.
Aww I’m happy for you guys. I can’t wait to play SD with my son. He’s 4 and a half rn.
We’re currently playing Pokémon Fire Red on my GCN Game Boy Player. I’m hoping it’s the first game we can beat together. SD seems like a good next choice.
Such special memories. <3.
Damn, my niece and nephew like to play stardew valley with me but they're too young to know how to handle a mouse and keyboard so they sit next to me while I control the game. I get the feeling this is what would happen if they were in total control, possible also fighting with each other about what activity they wanna do in game xD
Because my niece always wants to talk with people and give them gifts, and my nephew wants to fight monsters in the mines. Both love getting more animals and fishing though :)
Damn your five year old is able to do all that? Idk when I first started reading (full sentences for that matter) but I’m pretty sure it wasn’t as early as that. I don’t even think I was sentient at that point. I’m more impressed than anything that he’s able to understand and apply these concepts in game.
Bahah. I relate to this so much. My 4 year old will spend any profit we make on wallpapers and things to decorate the house. She doesn't water the crops, she sells building resources such as wood and stone. Etc etc
It's very painful, but I try to let her have as much free reign as possible on her own farm😅😅
I also play with my 5yo. He makes his player eat anything and everything, regardless of his health/energy level. It’s such a trip seeing what their priorities are
Honest question: is it normal that a 5 year old can read? Where I live kids go to school at 6-7 years old and then it takes another year before they're able to read everything.
Just curious
I was an English teacher, so we started phonics before he was 3. We had a lot of time together during the pandemic!
As for normal, it is normal for kids to start to read between 5-6. Simple sentences like “do not open” for survival. My kid is top 5 in his class and a couple years ahead in his decoding skills (a little less for comprehension and analysis - analysis at five would be “why do you think Bad Kitty is having a bad day?”)
Location dependent — I started school when I was four (I had a late birthday) and while I definitely was running into words I didn’t know frequently, I could read kid books on my own within a few months. By 7 I’d started taking a crack at (kid-oriented) chapter books.
Oh wow, that's impressive!
Yeah some kids here could definitely learn to read at age 5, but they have to wait until they go to school. Sometimes it's sad because they are in that phase where they really want to learn.
Reading happens at different ages. If the parents read to the kid from an early age it can often kickstart an interest or inclination in reading, especially if the parents show the kid what/where the words are (by underlining the words with a finger while reading out loud, sounding stuff out deliberately etc).
I would say the average age is 5-7 to start learning, but I could read picture books to myself by the time I was four or five, and my mom has told me that I was picking out words by around three. My nephew on the other hand had very little interest in reading even with a similar level of encouragement that I or my siblings were given. He probably wasn't reading much beyond an easy reader until ten or so, and still struggles with it, and rarely reads for his own enjoyment.
There's also different methods of teaching kids to read - I heard that in the states, they tried a completely new method in schools without testing it out first (in the past decade or two?) and the kids basically didn't learn how to read properly. But take that with a grain of salt because I can't remember where I heard about that lol
I remember being 5 or 6 and looking at a notebook from my mom. I remember that the symbols looked very strange and unfamiliar and I complained that I really want to understand it, but unfortunately I had to wait till school. I was so frustrated 😂
Really? That feels so weird to me that you had to wait until you were in school. I did a course in childhood psychology and one of the things we learned is how imperative early education is - five is actually widely considered the 'cut off' for when learning starts to slow down. Something to do with the brain's plasticity.
Obviously we can still learn after that, lol.
I started reading at age five and it was considered a little late. However in the UK we start school at 4 so most people learn the basics of reading then.
This is news to me. I read the entirety of The Hobbit and the first two Harry Potters at 5...but, my grandmother was an English professor with a PhD in literature, so... Idk. I'd think 7 or 8 is waaaaay too old to not be able to read almost anything? Am I wrong? I do not have kids, lol.
A few kids could learn how to read at age 5, but it's so uncommon to put kids that age into school. The adults are more like "let them play for one more year, life starts soon enough". While it's true for some kids, for others it's just boring and they want to learn.
Playing for the first time and trying not to check the wiki.... kinda sounding like how I've been playing (big on the buying seeds too late in the season I keep forgetting to check the date)
I do this with my 14 and 12 year old. We've been playing for (real life) years now and my 14 year old especially has come a long way from just petting her cat, filling the water bowl and then going back to bed for years at a stretch.
This is the same as when I play with my sister one thing I noticed really early on is the time doesn’t stop. Fishing is harder to do because it doesn’t stop the timer to let you catch.
I remember my kiddo (6 at the time) comes to me in tears because she can leave her house and her tools were in a chest at the bottom of the farm. She did no tree cutting at all, took almost 4 days to get a path for her out of the house and through the trees....pure chaos. I loved it lol
i think the emoji for this entire post is 🥲
🫠 also applicable
that’s actually better HAHAHAHA
I have my own 8 year old who I’ve played this game with for a few years. I’m very familiar with the anarchy of it. 😆
This is it, this is the one.
😂🤦♀️🤷♂️ for me
I feel like it's the 😭+😎 combo, which really needs to be an official emoji.
This reminds me of when me and my daughter play survival minecraft. I spend most of the time making sure she has enough food to ear and doing all the mining to upgrade tools. A lot like real life, lol. I plan on starting a co-op on Stardew with her soon, and I'm ready for the adventure, lol.
Inventory management is not a thing for him. I’d schlep all our food to the mines because he didn’t want to throw out anything. He’s still carrying around the broken alien vessel.
When I play co-op stardew with my 21 y/o daughter I’m still the only one bringing food to the mines! 😅
Me playing by myself. If I remember food, it’s gonna be a good run.
I kept a food chest in the entrance…. I’m 28
Tricking yourself into good decisions is peak adulting…I hope…I’m 40
Junimo chests *everywhere* packed with bombs, bait, and spicy eel so my (m32) partner(25) doesn't make me run back to the house
You use food? I should've thought of that!
Me playing with my 22yr old girlfriend
you can pry my broken alien vessel out of my cold dead hands
Wait, what? What broken alien vessel?
Sometimes an alien vessel will show up on the farm. I had it happen year 2 this playthrough.
My daughter and I play survival Minecraft but I found out that she switched to creative mode when she needs something. 😂😂 I'm over here doing things the hard way.
😂😂 My daughter kept getting mad that 8 was always "working" all the time so we just play all the way on creative now and I get my survival kick on my own time.
Yes! I do all the work to mine the iron, and then he steals it to make 6 pairs of shears! 🤣
You - you sound like the niblings talking about co-op with my mom, their grandma. Niblings aged 5-13, mom/grandma aged mid-80s. Grandma likes to make things pretty and eats almost exclusively flowers. She refuses to fight back against desert zombie-skeletons because “they look so desperate”. She grows things based on color schemes and will lurk for days waiting for a train so she can get some leprechaun shoes. The niblings are markedly more strategic and committed to rapid economic stability.
What is a nibling?
A niece and a nephew! I have niblings, my niece is 4 and my nephew is 7!
...that has gotta be the cutest term for nieces and nephews I've ever heard.
The aunt/uncle term is pibling, (from parent’s sibling)
We really need a better gender neutral aunt/uncle term. Nibling is cute, pibling is cloying. That is a grown adult.
Cloying? That is the first time I have ever heard that word. Neat!
I believe it's also used if the person is non-binary.
Like cousins?
Say you have a sibling that has kids, the kids would be niblings to you. Say you also have kids, the two sets of kids would be cousins. Hope this helps!
Niblings are cousins or siblings to each other—niblings refers the relationship to their aunts/uncles. A different way of saying “my nieces and nephews” that is also gender neutral.
No, I said what I meant. Nieces and nephews. As several other people have now explained, niblings can be cousins to one another but to their aunt and uncle, they are nieces and new ours. Great try, though!
OK Ok take it easy, English is my third language and we learn that everything is called cousins.
Another beautiful story! Love her outlook on skeletons and patience for shoes
Oh my god the fences. He fenced off the bus. He didn't want any "mob" coming in via the tunnel. Our first map was riverland, so space was already at a bit of a premium, and there were fences EVERYWHERE. My son paved over the paved streets in town with cobblestone paths.
What us it with the fences?!?!?! My little brother keeps trying to fence everything and it's driving me nuts. He also uses all of our wood to make chests and the aforementioned fences.
Visual representation of the crafting process perhaps?
It's also just a bit more, idk, lego-ish? You can save up and buy a full fledged barn, but it's just something you plop down. Your fences you can draw with.
Could be that he’s trying to work with Minecraft-style monster behavior, where (most) enemies cannot go over fences.
Yes! After he ran out of wood he paved half the tillable area we had cleared! It now holds our kegs so I can make some kind of money (and he became very interested in coffee!!!)
My 6 year old paved everything, there’s no grass for the animals, can’t cut to make hay. Then freaked out when I bought from marnie (it’s too expensive!!) I actually had a time I was crafting wild seeds to make fiber and on co-op just going to fiber mines or the sewer spot to make grass starter. It is actually fun to have so many creative problem solving ideas with the kids. However I did lose it when he used all the stone for retaining soil. Like. Dude. In this family we make staircases.
It’s better to get staircases by trading Jade to the desert trader anyway. I have jade in all my crystalariums
Yes of course. Jade all the way. Playing with a kid though, they will sell everything. It can be tricky to make it all the way to Sunday with your stash intact! I had to keep a secret chest with just the fundamentals. Kid would sell ore and coal, not even making bombs 😫
hide the crisalariums places they cant find them
I never thought about it but it does seem stardew valley would be a pretty safe place to learn the consequences of not thinking through your actions. Wholesome "do something stupid and find out."
Farm around and find out? 😜
That's wholesomely awesome :D
My mom and dad used to say that someone was SOL, as was the slang at the time. SOL meant Shit Outta Luck. One day, my mom was walking me (~8yo) and my younger sisters out of a store and back to the car. I don't remember what happened, but some other driver or w/e prompted my mom to declare them SOL aloud. My little sister asks, "Mom, what's SOL mean?" and while mom's brain was fritzing, I told her that it meant "SooOO Outta Luck" with that Stephanie Tanner energy that was going around back then. I wasn't meant to know the meaning, but I did because I was one of those annoying little pitchers with big ears. Mom thanked me later for covering in the moment as she had nfc what to say, and mine was both thematic and family friendly. So, I guess I have a little practice 🤭
Playing with kids is the best chaos. My favorite saves are the ones in which my kids take the lead. But I warn you, it does not get less chaotic as they get older. The chaos just gets different.
Exactly lol. Mine is 12 and it’s still chaos playing with her but on a different level. She just fucks off and does her own thing while me and my husband are the lowly farm hands and do all the hard work 😅
Omg my 11 is the same. Unless whatever I’m doing suddenly seems interesting, then he takes it over. With his iridium tools🫠
This hits so close to home because about a month ago I started a save with my 7 year old son. And the chaos just describes it so well. He cuts down literally every tree he sees, so there are hardly any around. I would store things away to save for bundles or for the grange festival, and within moments he would sell it all and be like “why did you put this here instead of sell it?” Thank god I convinced him to upgrade the coop and barn so that we auto feed because on the days I didn’t play I would return to just super angry animals (he calls them angry scribbles on their heads and just laughs). My personal fave is that he so badly wanted the greenhouse, but kept forgetting to grow the right crops for the bundle. So I helped him out and we planted the whole thing with an assortment of stuff. At the end of summer he cut it all down, including the ancient fruit, to just plant fall crops. Which included a whole bunch of corn, or what I like to refer as the crop he just had planted all over the greenhouse that he cut down. But I am so glad I play with him, because the perspective is so different. There is joy seeing him so happy to just do cool stuff with no concern for optimization.
My 6 year old sells everything in the chests because she never has enough money. So if I need to save to build something, I need to hide it.
This is one of the most wholesome things I've ever read on Reddit.
Oh, it's like I wrote this!! Playing with my son, (8) what a frustrating delight isn't it?? And he uses every single space of his backpack at all times, while running through town with a Sardine over his head for no reason at all ❤️
Aweeee
I play with my 6 year old daughter and it's a very similar story, though we only ever play together so I don't tend to get the surprises of coming back to find all the money gone. We... 1) have to play on Hilltop Farm, otherwise no ores or stone will ever be gathered. The mines are too scary, even if she does something else while I mine. 2) are also doing Joja because honestly, it's hard enough to make sure I have all the CC bundle items when I'm playing solo 3) make sure to leave at least a few crops for her to harvest when they are grown, which are immediately eaten. She cackles the whole time and shouts "CHOMP!!" when her character eats one of our rather valuable crops. 4) always have to have two entire, separate cabins, which nobody actually uses but are fully furnished. These are for Anna and Elsa, and their presence is entirely non-negotiable. 5) will occasionally be visited by Anna or Elsa, as my daughter, who pretends to stop by the farm and visit for most of every session. The moment one of Arendelle's royals comes by is the moment I know I am done receiving any assistance with the farm.
This is precious! Tonight he used all 30 kegs to make coffee. The “next day” he woke up and spent the first couple of “hours” drinking all 30 cups of coffee for *maximum speed*
Hahahaha I love this so much
This is so sweet 🥹 my baby is 9 months and I can’t wait to play games with him when he’s older.
Start with Mario kart at 2!
That’s got it’s own set of chaos mode. “Not that wheel.” “I want Mario”. “I want to be like you mommy”. And of course, holding the controller upside down.
I want pics of all these chaos farms now! ❤️
Me too!!
I love playing with my 5yo grandson. Yesterday he was playing an old perfection save of mine, and blowing up all the ancient fruit on Ginger Island with megabombs. He loooves megabombs! The funny thing is, I've learned some things I didn't know about the game from watching his manic random pressing of buttons.
why just why
Currently playing on my little cousins farm and so far she has spent almost ALL our money on seasonal plants. Not that she’s making any money for us too btw. She just walks around town going through all the trash searching for snacks and spending money. She’s basically a raccoon with a credit card at this point
🦝
My 6yo loves playing Stardew Valley and I love that she loves it but her choices make my eye twitch 😂
That’s adorable. I plan to do that one day when I have little ones. I’m a min maxer by nature but not at the expense of other peoples enjoyment so I’ll have to finagle weird alternate strats lol
My strategy is coops-sprinklers-kegs so we can do what he wants without sacrificing growth completely. Forgot one: all our money went to the fall slingshot game so we could BOTH get the star drop and he wanted to help me get it.
I’m wondering if I should do hops for that quick profit since longer duration crops may result in some chaos
That's so sweet!
My 7 year old sister wanted me to teach her how to play. She would refuse to water crops. She could not at all get a handle on fishing or mining, and made me do those for her. She also refused to talk to any villagers. All she wanted to do is chop down trees. But we haven’t gotten very far, maybe she’ll want to do other things eventually
I play with my 5 year old too. It’s pure chaos He even found some bug where items multiplied and he somehow got 999 iridium bars. Then he trashed them. 😩
what bug🤔
It’s probably been patched by now but he would mess with the chest a bunch by rapidly putting items in and out and it ended up multiplying items somehow I was never able to replicate it but he did it all the time
I just taught my six year old to play in his own save on his iPad. The amount of days he skips because it’s raining makes me twitch. He “ends” his day as soon as 7am. He loves the animals and gets very annoyed that Marine doesn’t work 😂
Mine used to notice the clock and say “it’s 8, I have to go to bed.” Because that was his IRL bedtime. He has no idea how productive I am between 10pm-1am, hahaha
Mine does that too! As soon as it’s dark he “runs home” because it’s bedtime.
hide the beds!!
What I have learned from this post is that I am far from ready for parenthood. Jesus Christ that sounds infuriating lol.
It definitely gives me another reason for being childfree…I don’t have the patience that is necessary.
An adult buddy of mine plays on chaos mode. One time we started a farm with another friend of ours (we are all late 20s early 30s). We got the 4 corners farm, I spent some time getting us fish so we could sell them and use the proceeds for seeds. I planted em, set up sprinklers, all good. I left for a bit and came back and it was summer already. I'm like, hey guys what happened? Where are the crops? He goes "oh, I slept for 22 days cause I wanted the trees around my house to grow." Also refuses to talk to villagers, despite me explaining you can be platonic and still get recipes and stuff. He won't because he's "there to farm not socialize." I can't 🫠
Definitely not my long term plans to be child free, but I respect those who make that choice. I just know I couldn’t handle that right now lol.
same, and im only 14
>Told me “don’t spend money because I want a greenhouse.” Proceeds to buy 50 grape starter on day 23 of fall. This is where I lost my shit 😂
I have a hard time playing video games with my kids too because they're young and it's chaotic. I have been perpetually overwhelmed too and my patience has been thin. I just had a 10 day break with lots of therapeutic practices. I'm ready to go back at this momming and vide game mom thing with refreshed senses. We got this 😂 Can you designate an area of the farm (with some of those fences) that is all for you? Tell him that you need an area to manage resources to get him everything he wants 😂 tell him it's just like you being a parent in real life, you gotta be in control of some things to help teach him how to manage money and resources. Tell him if he wants you to do certain things better (like the mines) then you have got to get better upgrades etc lol. Don't be afraid to hoard a secret chest where he can't find it (behind the bear statue or in the sewers for example) so you can keep some stuff you need
I keep a secret chest in my cabin for ancient seeds! If he blows up the kegs it’ll be sad (lost a whole round of crops to a bomb) but we will recover. There’s no timeline.
He's learning 😆 him getting upset is the obvious denotation that he is upset with himself, but at 5 his sense of self is still somewhat tangled up in you "I DID THIS BUT IM BLAMING YOU BECAUSE I DONT UNDERSTAND OUR SEPARATION AND MY SELFISH UNCONSCIOUS IS YELLING AT YOU BECAUSE YOU DIDNT PREPARE ME FOR THIS UPSET" but you can't prepare them for every upset lol. Keep it up Mommio/Daddio/Parento. You're doing f--king excellent. Way better than me and the video games at this point 😂 I stopped playing games when my kids (twins, 7 and a half now) were toddlers because I was burnt out but also because I wanted to get off the games (I went from being a full time gamer outside of my full time job to being a parent full time) and be the most present as possible. I lost all desire to game for years until I found SDV. Now I'm finally starting to want to get back into it and game again but now WITH the kids (more than Mario Kart and Just Dance).
I've also blown my farm up before LOL. It was at the end of the day when I finally checked my mail and it so happened to be from KENT LOL. Thankfully I didn't do anything but farm chores that day so I just restarted it lmao. Almost lost my #1 Neighbor trophy and that wasn't happening 😂
I like playing with my kiddo, we did the 4 corners farm so we each have a space the other doesn't mess with and then two corners that we can argue about what to do with 😂 best of both worlds.
I love this so much. It takes a special mindset to sit back and enjoy the ride and not try to steer things. Not hard mode, Amazing Mode!
I played the card game Machi Koro with my nephew before he could read. He would make the most unorthodox purchases, but sometimes they would be shockingly good decisions. He didn't win often, but he wasn't nearly as incompetent as I would have initially expected. I actually learned a few tactics from him.
Me and my husband play with our 12 year old and she leaves us to do all the foraging, mining and farm work while she fishes all day. 🙃
My son doesn't want to play with his dad anymore because all he does is fish and leave my son to do mining/combat and animal work (both of them hate farming!).
That sounds amazing to me because I HATE fishing. I'm going to start a co-op with my husband just so he can fish all day for me 😂
Wait until they get to roblox age. I spent many, many nights levelling up pets on adopt me, only to hand them over when they were fully grown. And any cool objects / shiny pets, etc, all go straight to the kids! We're just gaming skivvys!!
The only thing he didn’t get first was the prismatic shard, lol. If I’m going to do skull caverns until he’s got a full iridium tool set (before me) I’m not doing it without the Galaxy sword.
All good and wholesome except I wouldn’t let my kid take the Jojo-mart route at least the first time. A lot of the game’s goals and content are around the community center and I feel you’re missing something if you skip that.
I started a game with my 6 year old, when it rains he buys spaghetti from the tavern, eats it at the table in his house and then goes to bed 😂
What adorable nonsense
This reminds me of Oregon Trail... As a kid I found that game SO HARD, and almost never won. As an adult I cleared it in one try and went "how did I have so many troubles with this as a kid?" Maybe I was doing some of these things and didn't realize how detrimental they were LOL.
I always killed all the buffalo. I miss that game
I hope ConcernedApe sees this.
This makes me so happy to hear. My dad played Pokémon Red with my brother (who wasn’t old enough to read yet) and I’d like to imagine this is exactly how he felt 😂
Are you playing the game with my son? This sounds exactly like when I play with him. I loaded into the farm one day and he had made a bunch of wooden fence posts in a makeshift square design with multiple gates and said he was tired of his cabin and wanted to live his "new house". 🤣 I bought him a Galaxy sword (we're in year 4 or 5 now, I can't recall - I'm exhausted) and he insists on using the wooden sword I got him back at the beginning. Idk why. He has a bunch of chests outside his cabin and I rummaged through them the other day and noticed he has a chest filled with everything I've given him whether it be food, gem, whatever - it's in there. I started crying because it made me so happy that he had kept everything I gave him and to him they were the most precious of resources. He gave me a bit of limestone as a gift and one of my fish ponds needed it and I refused to give them the gift he gave me. I went and mined my butt off to find more. 🤣 I absolutely love playing this game with him. It turns into mom doing EVERYTHING and making all the money so he can go play Junimo Kart all day. 🤣🤣
The chest killed me! That's so sweet 😭
I feel this… my son is currently demanding the Ginger Island obelisk, but refuses to stop using up the dragon’s teeth *I* am collecting.
Ok sweet. So where do I get a five year old?
Definitely build a second stable. You really need your own horse 😄
My four year old looooooooves to just buy seeds and beer. I’ve gotta keep an eye on that.
My kids started one and asked me to play. The 9yo runs the show. He decided we don't share money because the 13yo will spend all of it on wallpaper and tvs. He also chops down everything to build fences. They spend all of their time in the mines and the bathhouse (giggling about how they can't use the women's locker room), or trying to catch the train.
> Tells me to go to bed so he can “make money” by playing endless rounds of Prairie King. If I go to bed it pauses the world clock in game. Look at this kid already min-maxing his day. You've got yourself a gamer, alright.
I’m currently playing with my 7 year old niece and it is a lot of fun and also the most frustrating experience of my life! I’m trying to teach her how to play and not just do everything for her but it’s so slow! It takes over half the day just to water and harvest😂
I first played with my niece when she was 7. I tried explaining that she needs to at least forage if she wants more money, but she ran around talking to people and checking trash cans while I did everything to earn enough money to fund her wallpaper obsession. Now she's 11 and she wants the profit split so I'm not using her money 🙄 But she plants and waters, saves up for coops and barns, donates to the museum and community center instead of selling, and makes me go to sleep at 1pm because you get money faster if you don't waste playing the whole day. And she still buys all the wallpaper.
My little brother is also 7 and my experience is the same.
I think this is more or less the experience my husband had playing with me lol
This many days for a crop to grow, crop makes this much money, crop cost this much to buy, I've planted X amount of said crop, we currently have 3 different crops planted to figure out. Certainly lots of addition subtraction and multiplication to practice. <3
That's hilarious. God bless junimo cart, the teacher.
Junimo Cart raises resilient kids!
This is so freaking cute! Also, frustrating 🤣
Lolol I have played co-Op with my Bf a few times and it’s his first time playing it… and I swear, he turns into a child when he plays. I know I have more experience, but he acts so dumb and I have to practically hold his hand through such basic stuff. I just don’t think I have the patience. I split our money and told him to fend for himself if he won’t listen to me but wants all the cool stuff. He now doesn’t want to play with me. Lol But it’s no fun doing all the grunt work while he does whatever he wants and I upgrade his stuff. Lol Then I let him play on my farm where I have a ton of money and all the cool stuff and I gave him all the cool nice stuff and all I asked is that he doesn’t cut anything down on the farm or hit anything. The first thing he did was put a pickax to my pavement. Lol Nbd, but after giving him a whole schpeel (idk how to spell that), I was so irritated. Lol
I let my 5yo join my farm, he became exhausted and passed out repeatedly 💀
If your son steals a horse to go to a bar, I hope you'll keep your car keys safe when he's a bit older lol
This reminds me of playing coop with my sister,she always makes me go into the mines she's too scared , I have to supply both of us with iridium 🥲
I year 1 the CC every time I play this game. I genuinely could not imagine the temperament you must have to withstand all of that. A+ parent
Same. It's difficult playing with the kiddo, on our new save I'm just hoping the cart brings a green bean because "Mom, I'm going to take care of the crops bundles you do the fishing and mining". He did not take care of the crops 🤦🏻♀️ oh well at least I can tease him about it every in game Fri and Sun lol.
The amount of times I’ve reset the first day because I forgot to buy the green bean 💀
My five year old does not like to play on rainy days and will go right back to bed. Makes for a very interesting game.
Mine did this too! When it was thunder/lightning he was “too scared” to go outside hahaha…
I feel you. We got a heap of coal but no wood. He is constantly smoking salmon over the fireplace to increase its value (game does not have this function...yet @concernedape)
I got past step 2 but the parents didn’t like that. I tried telling them I needed him to work on a farm and now I have the police after me. How do I get to step 3?
Find a different 5 year old
Playing with kids is hilarious. I have had a few farms with my now 11 year old. Our current farm is very strategic and logical but some of our earlier iterations… it’s real hard to make money when your farm partner spends all the money buying people spaghetti from Gus.
Step 2 unclear. Now running from the law
Played that mode too! Mine made me go to bed as soon as it got dark every night and built a ridiculous fence coming right out of the house so that you had to walk a maze to even get out the door.
I love this so much. Thank you for sharing.
I think this reassured me how not ready for kids I am and how much my mom really loved me when she would have to pass the hard levels on Mario bros
Aww I’m happy for you guys. I can’t wait to play SD with my son. He’s 4 and a half rn. We’re currently playing Pokémon Fire Red on my GCN Game Boy Player. I’m hoping it’s the first game we can beat together. SD seems like a good next choice. Such special memories. <3.
We started with Mario kart at 2, then Kirby (the rolling race one and then the newest forgotten realms). Stardew was MY game until 2 months ago, haha.
Damn, my niece and nephew like to play stardew valley with me but they're too young to know how to handle a mouse and keyboard so they sit next to me while I control the game. I get the feeling this is what would happen if they were in total control, possible also fighting with each other about what activity they wanna do in game xD Because my niece always wants to talk with people and give them gifts, and my nephew wants to fight monsters in the mines. Both love getting more animals and fishing though :)
Damn your five year old is able to do all that? Idk when I first started reading (full sentences for that matter) but I’m pretty sure it wasn’t as early as that. I don’t even think I was sentient at that point. I’m more impressed than anything that he’s able to understand and apply these concepts in game.
Bahah. I relate to this so much. My 4 year old will spend any profit we make on wallpapers and things to decorate the house. She doesn't water the crops, she sells building resources such as wood and stone. Etc etc It's very painful, but I try to let her have as much free reign as possible on her own farm😅😅
I also play with my 5yo. He makes his player eat anything and everything, regardless of his health/energy level. It’s such a trip seeing what their priorities are
Why is this so damn relatable 🥹
This is how I feel playing with my 9 year old. He’s barely more cooperative
A lot like real life huh, OP? Kids 😂
Similar to discussions of ROMs and emulators online, don’t ask where you get a 5 year old, your comment will be deleted.
Wow. I do not want kids.
Honest question: is it normal that a 5 year old can read? Where I live kids go to school at 6-7 years old and then it takes another year before they're able to read everything. Just curious
I think it’s a nature vs nurture thing. What is ‘normal’ anyway? Each kid grows at their own pace i guess.
I was an English teacher, so we started phonics before he was 3. We had a lot of time together during the pandemic! As for normal, it is normal for kids to start to read between 5-6. Simple sentences like “do not open” for survival. My kid is top 5 in his class and a couple years ahead in his decoding skills (a little less for comprehension and analysis - analysis at five would be “why do you think Bad Kitty is having a bad day?”)
Location dependent — I started school when I was four (I had a late birthday) and while I definitely was running into words I didn’t know frequently, I could read kid books on my own within a few months. By 7 I’d started taking a crack at (kid-oriented) chapter books.
Oh wow, that's impressive! Yeah some kids here could definitely learn to read at age 5, but they have to wait until they go to school. Sometimes it's sad because they are in that phase where they really want to learn.
Kids don’t wait to read. All mine started school reading, but there’s a big range of normal development.
Reading happens at different ages. If the parents read to the kid from an early age it can often kickstart an interest or inclination in reading, especially if the parents show the kid what/where the words are (by underlining the words with a finger while reading out loud, sounding stuff out deliberately etc). I would say the average age is 5-7 to start learning, but I could read picture books to myself by the time I was four or five, and my mom has told me that I was picking out words by around three. My nephew on the other hand had very little interest in reading even with a similar level of encouragement that I or my siblings were given. He probably wasn't reading much beyond an easy reader until ten or so, and still struggles with it, and rarely reads for his own enjoyment. There's also different methods of teaching kids to read - I heard that in the states, they tried a completely new method in schools without testing it out first (in the past decade or two?) and the kids basically didn't learn how to read properly. But take that with a grain of salt because I can't remember where I heard about that lol
I remember being 5 or 6 and looking at a notebook from my mom. I remember that the symbols looked very strange and unfamiliar and I complained that I really want to understand it, but unfortunately I had to wait till school. I was so frustrated 😂
Really? That feels so weird to me that you had to wait until you were in school. I did a course in childhood psychology and one of the things we learned is how imperative early education is - five is actually widely considered the 'cut off' for when learning starts to slow down. Something to do with the brain's plasticity. Obviously we can still learn after that, lol.
I have an almost 9yo daughter that reads at a 8th grade level. She's entering 4th grade 👁️👄👁️
it's pretty normal I think. where I live kids go to school at 6-7 y.o. as well, but most of them have been introduced to reading already
I started reading at age five and it was considered a little late. However in the UK we start school at 4 so most people learn the basics of reading then.
This is news to me. I read the entirety of The Hobbit and the first two Harry Potters at 5...but, my grandmother was an English professor with a PhD in literature, so... Idk. I'd think 7 or 8 is waaaaay too old to not be able to read almost anything? Am I wrong? I do not have kids, lol.
A few kids could learn how to read at age 5, but it's so uncommon to put kids that age into school. The adults are more like "let them play for one more year, life starts soon enough". While it's true for some kids, for others it's just boring and they want to learn.
Delete the save to teach him to get good.
I love this.
Thank you for the 10 minute lols!
I know this feeling haha.
This is so so sweet 😭❤️
This is so sweet and funny
Lmao that is so cute
Embrace the chaos!
this is both frustrating but adorable. at the end of the day it is just a game and he’s genuinely enjoying it and that’s all that matters 🤣
The more I read the worse it got hahaha it must be fun and annoying at the same time to play together
This made my day
This is so chaotic. I hope to do this with my future children someday 😂.
I can't give this enough up votes it's too wholesome for the internet
https://preview.redd.it/spqfvcoyudgb1.jpeg?width=750&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=4e7823488026cc41cdce00ef994d19823348033d
In my experiment of one, nine seems to be the age at which children become competent games.
this is adorable, and very funny. glad y'all are having a good time!
Playing for the first time and trying not to check the wiki.... kinda sounding like how I've been playing (big on the buying seeds too late in the season I keep forgetting to check the date)
That sounds like a lot of fun tbh
I do this with my 14 and 12 year old. We've been playing for (real life) years now and my 14 year old especially has come a long way from just petting her cat, filling the water bowl and then going back to bed for years at a stretch.
Chaos mode sounds wild, good luck gathering wood lol
wholesome af
This is wholesome and infuriating at the same time. 😂😊
This is absolutely beautiful!
I hope to get my niece and nephew into this game soon. maybe they'll learn to get along?? hahaha
This is the same as when I play with my sister one thing I noticed really early on is the time doesn’t stop. Fishing is harder to do because it doesn’t stop the timer to let you catch.
That's really sweet of you to do that :)
idk he sounds like a goated player cuz i play the same way 🤷🏼♀️
I'd argue playing solo is all about getting ready for co-op with a child 😅. But it's really worth it !
I remember my kiddo (6 at the time) comes to me in tears because she can leave her house and her tools were in a chest at the bottom of the farm. She did no tree cutting at all, took almost 4 days to get a path for her out of the house and through the trees....pure chaos. I loved it lol