When asked what I would do differently raising my children the number one things that pops in my head is that I would have adjusted my approach and their behavior to video games. This is not because I’m against gaming. In fact when my wife was rocking our first daughter to sleep I would often play the original Legend of Zelda. I can remember times of immense frustration with the game that after my daughter was put in bed my wife would sit down with paper and pencil and help me map out the dungeons so I could complete the level. Talk about bonding in a young marriage.
Years later when I had multiple teens in the house we decided to get our boys a game system, and then the following year another gaming console so they could each play at the same time. Little did I know how much gaming had changed over the years. My first wake up was when I heard my son yelling over his microphone. I asked who he was talking to and he said, “Some guy in England.” What?! After he educated me on how multi-player games worked on the modern scale I was shocked and of course attempted to deter my 13 year old from playing online with adults.
The intense emotion gaming brought out was also an eye opener. I was used to my own frustration playing against a programed game. The almost real-world conflict and emotional turmoil that emerged in role playing type games spilled out into the rest of the house. There was yelling, tears, and certainly some unChristian like speech.
The addictive quality of modern gaming was also something I hadn’t expected. Probably, like many aspects in life I was basing someone else’s behavior on my own past responses. I always loved to play a good game and then go and do something else like read or exercise. It seems my sons’ personalities combined with the social aspect of gaming made for quite an addictive tendency. The desire to play with “friends” and to accomplish the task/mission often overshadowed emotional controls that I was sure had been instilled. Up until I learned how to set a cutoff time on the router, bed times were always filled with arguing and the desire for “just 5 more minutes.”
Although I believe my wife and I learned quickly and made adjustments along the way, it would have been great to have been more prepared in order to head off problems from the beginning. Knowing what I do now I would have made the following adjustments:
- I would not have gotten a game system until my children were older and certainly not allowed them to play games that were online until they were 15 or 16.
- We would have only bought one system so that usage would have to be minimized due to sharing.
- There would certainly be restrictions on who could be playing on the other end of the microphone.
- Time restrictions. At first I treated it like tv time-what can a couple hours a day hurt? In hindsight I would cut that down to an hour or less per day.
Although we eventually caught up and made some necessary adjustment it would have been far better for my children’s emotional health as well as the family dynamic had my wife and I been more informed and set stricter ground rules from the beginning.