"I just want to be like everyone else!" he emoted. That is, like everyone else that has an iPhone (preferably 5 or higher) and plays Halo. Not as in "I have diabetes and want to be like everyone else". It was a bittersweet moment. He did not see diabetes as keeping him from being "normal", rather he lamented that he had (I quote) "smart parents" that are aware of the leading research on social media and violent video games.
Being like everyone else is doable, I said and picked up the phone. Who was I calling? Why, the public school of course because "everyone else" catches the 6:30 a.m. bus that rolls past our place and they go to school all day. (Yes, we homeschoolers do sometimes use the "I'm going to send you off to school threat".) You see, it's just that I don't understand.
Would you, I ask, play a game in which you grabbed kittens and twisted their necks until they snapped, killing them. He turned his head, thinking. Was this a trick question? Of course not, he would not. But yet, it is okay to play games in which you shoot people dead. (See, it was a trick question.)
This haranguing of the parents over movie and video game ratings, over the usage in time of electronics, of not wanting to leave one's chair at least once an hour to stretch and blink one's eyelids, it goes on and on. The idea, I think, is that if he can keep it up long enough, he thinks he can wear us down. And you know? He's right. Eventually, he will have Halo as he gets older, he will have an iPhone. We're only buying time.
I sound desperately old as I tell him of my childhood where parents would have laughed to hear that you wanted them to pay monthly for a data plan, that you needed, oh desperately neeeeeeded certain things. When my girls were young, I didn't let them watch Power Rangers, for goodness sakes, because they kicked people! We didn't have cable and computers ran on disks.
Since there is no going back, we negotiate. Boys are very good negotiators. I'm thinking we might have a lawyer in the family one day.
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1 comment:
My kids all play Halo, they are 16, 18 and 22. No violent tendencies among them. I don't think it's all that bad because the violence is all against the aliens and doesn't look realistic at all. We did make them wait until they were teens to play teen games though.
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