"The limit does not exist!" -from Mean Girls

~or~

Why I Hate Video Games

~or~

Why Parenting Can Be Really Difficult and What Works for One Kid Might Not Work for Another

~or~

Please Don't Judge Me

So.  Video games.  They're not exactly a new thing.  In fact, I'm pretty sure they got started when I was a kid, about forty years ago.  Granted, they've come a long way since then.  I actually remember that we had one of those "table tennis" ping pong games on some sort of computer, which I think was the very first "video game" ever.  We moved on to a Texas Instruments that had such awesome games as Hunt the Wumpus (featuring the music, "In the Hall of the Mountain King"-- the only song I can kind of play on the piano), Parsec and Alpine ("You forgot to duck" remains a favorite phrase amongst me and my sisters).  We also had some sort of poker game which my Mom was constantly hiding from us and claiming that it was simply "missing."  Smart move, Mom, smart move.

Later on, we graduated to a Gameboy.  We loved playing Tetris on it-- who didn't?-- and had a couple Super Mario Brothers games...  But that was about it.  We'd go through phases where we would play those games obsessively, and then we'd get bored and do something else.  And that was about it.  There just wasn't that much to do with these games.

I never got into the REAL games.  Final Fantasy and Halo and all that-- games that suck you in and have you playing with people on-line.  I had friends who played them, and I remember once listening to the checker at a grocery store explaining to me that her on-line Final Fantasy friends were her REAL FRIENDS (with a "goshdarnit" at the end sort of implied), but I just never bothered with any of those.  For one thing, I know my obsessive personality well enough to know that if I let myself get pulled into these, there was probably no stopping.  For another thing, I was busy enough in college without adding such a huge time-suck into my life.  And probably most of all, I figured out that games aren't really my thing.  

Don't get me wrong-- I see nothing wrong with a game of Clue or whatever.  But I'd rather sit and chat with a person than play a game with them any day.  It's just how I roll.

So that was that.

But then I also observed people who fell down the gaming hole.  The guy whose girlfriend broke up with him because he would rather play video games than be with her.  A friend who claimed that people always came first for him, and then sat ignoring me so he could play Spider-Man.  And the numerous boys who ultimately dropped out of BYU because they chose video games over attending class (let alone doing any of the work).  And I started to feel that video games weren't just a hobby I didn't want to participate in them, there was something pernicious about them.

The more I witnessed, the more video games seemed to be on a par with pornography to me.  Now, I lost some of you right there.  That's a big jump to make, I know, but hear me out.  I think that anything, anything, that makes real life seem boring in comparison (and that's exactly what porn does for real-life sex), isn't healthy for you.  

Because let's face it-- real life is amazing.  Nature alone is pretty kick-a awesome, and scientists are always discovering new wonderful things.  But even real life must have a hard time competing with wizards and dragons and magic and girls with eyes the size of tennis balls who never complain and whatever else you can make up and animate for a video game.*

So yeah, I don't like video games.

And I was fortunate enough to find Craig, who also doesn't like video games.  (I've talked to plenty of friends who wish they could drag their husbands away from the computer and get them involved in family life a little more.  I'm very thankful I don't have this problem with Craig.)  So it wasn't an issue for us at all. 

Until Bentley came along and got old enough to become interested in it all.  And suddenly I find myself trying to navigate all the same gaming questions as a parent making decisions for someone with their own opinions, and not just for myself.  And trying to figure it all out for a kid who sees all the other kids playing video games and talking about them and can't understand why his mom has made a blanket decision that she hates all video games.  And suddenly it began to feel very complicated.

And it's even more complicated because of who Bentley is.  I've read parenting stuff and they all say the same thing: the key is to set limits.  Kids need to learn how to navigate this stuff with their parents' help.  Kids need exposure without letting them drown in it.  Kids need to gradually learn how to set their own limits, under their parents' guidance.

And I believe that.  I think it makes a lot of sense.  But when we try to do this with Bentley it fails miserably.  I've tried to say, "You get X amount of time on the iPad, and then that's it for the day" or whatever.  But no matter how much I explain the rules and enforce them, what happens is that when the time is up, Bentley is screaming at me because he wants more.  (This does nothing to make me appreciate whatever it is that kids are supposed to be "learning" from being allowed to play in the first place.)  And after a summer of trying to make this work, culminating in Bentley freaking out unable to sleep at night because he was scared of zombies (thank you, Minecraft, for that), we finally pulled the plug on anything that had zombies in it.  And as soon as our drive home was completed, we put away the iPad and the kids have not seen it since.

Because for Bentley, it seems that any of this is too much.  He can't handle the freedom, and he can't handle being told to stop.  It wasn't working.

As I've been typing this, he's been out in the backyard digging a hole.  His own real-life version of Minecraft (minus the diamonds, zombies, etc.).  And he's happy right now and I don't feel like he's ruining his brain.  And when he's done he can come inside and I don't have to try to get him to stop or have him be sneaky about not stopping or have him yelling at me that I'm a mean mommy for making him stop...  And while we've certainly had our fair share of run-ins about other things, it's a relief to at least not have to be stressing about video games, too.

So that's where we are for now.  Maybe at some point this will change.  Maybe all those parenting advice things are aimed at older children and Bentley's just too young for this.  But I know for now that we've tried and it didn't work, so we are cutting out the games for a bit.

And I'm okay with that

*Now, by the same argument, you could probably claim that I should stop reading Harry Potter.  But the difference is that you read the novel, actively engage your mind, and then when you finish you close the book and go back to real life.  It doesn't lead to quite the same addictive behavior that many games purposely employ.  So there is a difference.