Here's Liz Atwood with this week's Tween Tuesday:

Sometimes trying to entertain kids makes you feel really old.

A good friend offered to watch my 10-year-old son this week when schools were closed for parent conferences. When she called to invite him over to play with her son for the day, she said she had a craft the boys could make. Another friend planning to visit for Thanksgiving is looking forward to playing board games with the kids.

My boys, however, aren’t exactly jumping up and down with enthusiasm.

Crafts and board games sound like a lot of fun to me, but to my kids, these past times are low-tech and boring. In their world, if it doesn’t come with a battery or an electric cord, it’s no fun.

Now that the holiday shopping season is approaching, it’s perhaps a good time to consider the difference between what kids think is fun and what we think is fun. A Harris survey conducted in October found that 45 percent of adults who plan on buying toys this year will be buying children’s books. About 30 percent will buy arts and crafts and a 25 percent will buy board games.

But for kids like mine, all is not lost. The survey finds those with a tween (ages 10-12) in the household are planning to purchase games for consoles (67 percent), then children's books (43 percent) and board games (41 percent) while those with a teen (13-17) are buying games for consoles (62 percent), sports equipment (37 percent) and children's books (34 percent).

Personally, I think it’s good to expose the kids to old-fashioned pleasures like a game of Monopoly or Battleship. These games don’t have high-tech graphics, but at least I have a chance of winning.