Hi. We're Richard and Connie Wardlaw, and we live in Springfield, Missouri, with our three kids: Catherine, who's 12, Andrew, who's 9, and Victoria, who's 6. Richard is a police dispatcher. Connie works part-time as a teller at a bank. Under the TV in the living room there's a Nintendo 64 and a PlayStation, there's a family computer in the kitchen, and there's a Game Boy that travels with Andrew everywhere he goes, including, once, into the bathtub. (It survived.)

We started this page because other parents at church kept asking us the same question at the coffee hour: "Is this game all right?" We aren't experts. We're parents who read the box, rent before we buy, and sit on the couch and watch for a while. We've written down what we've learned, and what we think of the games in our house, so we can stop answering the same question twelve times a Sunday. Now we just give out the address.

One thing up front. We don't think video games are bad, and we don't think they're good for you either, any more than TV or comic books are. Some games are great fun, some are a waste of money, and a few aren't meant for kids at all. Our job is to know which is which.

Almost every video game sold in a store has a rating from the ESRB, the Entertainment Software Rating Board, which the game industry set up in 1994. It works a lot like the movie ratings, with letters instead of G and PG. Here's what they mean:

You'll find the letter on the front of the box, down in a bottom corner, in a little black-and-white box. Some older computer games carry a different label instead, from a group called the RSAC, which rates violence, language and so on each on its own scale. If you see one of those, read the scales. They tell you a lot.

The letter tells you the age. The content descriptors tell you why. Turn the box over. On the back, next to the rating symbol again, there's a short list of phrases like "Animated Violence," "Comic Mischief," "Mild Language," "Animated Blood" or "Strong Language." That list is the most useful thing on the whole package, and most parents never look at it.

Two games can both be rated T for completely different reasons, one for language and one for violence, and you might feel very differently about those two. The descriptors are where you find out. Note also the difference between "animated" and "realistic." A cartoon dragon knocking over a cartoon sheep is the animated kind. That's fine at our house.

Other things that help:

• Rent first. The video store rents games for a few days, for a lot less than buying. If it's a disappointment or a problem, it goes back Tuesday.
• Watch for fifteen minutes. Sit on the couch while your kid plays. You'll learn more in fifteen minutes than from any box.
• Ask your kid to explain it. What's the point of the game? Who are you? What happens if you win? Kids love explaining their games, and you hear a lot in the answer.
• The rating is a start, not the end. You know your own kid. Some 13-year-olds aren't ready for a T game and some 12-year-olds are. That's your call, and it's allowed to be different from the neighbors'.

These are on an index card on the refrigerator. Every family's will be different. These work for us, most days.

1. Homework first. Done and checked, not "almost done."

2. One hour on school nights. Total, for all games and the computer, not one hour per machine. (Andrew tried this argument. It was a good argument. It didn't work.) Weekends are more relaxed, as long as everybody gets outside.

3. Games stay in the living room. No TVs or game machines in bedrooms. The computer is in the kitchen. Not because we're snooping, but because games are more fun with company, and because we want to know what's going on in our house.

4. We read the box together before it comes home. Whether it's bought, rented or borrowed from a friend.

5. When Mom or Dad says it's time, you get two minutes to find a save point. We learned the hard way that some games can't be saved just anywhere, and a kid who loses forty minutes of progress because Dad said "now" is a kid who's going to be upset. Two minutes. Then it's off.

6. Big kids help little kids. Victoria is six and can't get past some parts of Spyro. Catherine and Andrew take turns helping. This has been better for everybody than we expected.