How Animal Crossing is Helping Us Cope with Stress
I was sent product for the purpose of this review. All opinions are my own. This post may contain affiliate links.
Quarantine has done interesting things to my family. We are learning new skills, discovering new hobbies, and I’ve developed an Animal Crossing obsession that has sparked some serious competitiveness in my home. The new Animal Crossing: New Horizons game from Nintendo has been a HUGE hit with my family, but what surprised me the most was how much I have enjoyed it.
With kids participating in virtual learning at home and hearing scary things on the news, many kids are dealing with anxiety too. The new Animal Crossing game that was just released came at the perfect time and is a great way to destress as a family.
My kids LOVE our Nintendo Switch but I usually only join them on a few games (just try and beat me on Mario Kart). They convinced me to try Animal Crossing with them.
In Animal Crossing: New Horizons, you travel to a deserted island and work on building a community. You start in a tent and as you earn miles and “bells”, the two currencies on the island, you are able to pay off debt and then upgrade your house as well as buy some cool little things.
Playing Animal Crossing to Cope with Anxiety?
When schools first closed and the word “pandemic” became a frequent topic of conversation, my 7-year-old daughter started to develop some serious anxiety. She isn’t generally an anxious kid but this whole situation has her worried.
She is having trouble sleeping and tells me that she lays awake at night worrying about “all the scary things in the world”.
I don’t want her to live in a constant state of anxiety so I’ve been desperately looking for ways that she can relax during the day.
When we were sent the new Animal Crossing game a few weeks ago, I didn’t originally have my daughter in mind for the game because most of the video games we have are a bit beyond her skill level.
Animal Crossing surprised me because my whole family has enjoyed it. My teenagers jump on and play throughout the day and my anxious 7-year-old has been one of the games’ biggest fans at my house.
The game is played in real time and there are new, exciting things to discover each day. My daughter wakes up each morning and runs to the “store” to see what cute items are for sale that day and runs all over the island trying to discover new things.
Homeschooling during a pandemic has been a challenge for us. My daughter doesn’t want to work when she is stressed, and she’s pretty much stressed all the time right now. We’ve used Animal Crossing as a reward for doing schoolwork in small blocks. She has been highly motivated to finish her school assignments to earn time playing Animal Crossing. Even my 5-year-old twins have gotten into the game, with just a bit of help from their older siblings.
During the game you work through various missions to earn Nook miles, one of the currencies in the game, which lets you buy items. Items aren’t available all the time and some things have to be discovered by finding messages in bottles washed up on the beach or shooting down wrapped gifts out of the sky.
It gives my kids something to look forward to each day. Currently we have a (rather heated) competition going to see who can build the biggest house and fill it with the coolest stuff.
