Violent Video Games

[Joannette]

My boys 13 & 9 like to play violent video games like Call of Duty and Uncharted almost all day. Also my youngest son 9 has a nerf arsenal that we have purchased. Although they are not violent kids I worry a little. Before, I was trying to control everything that teaches violence on television, video games and movies but not anymore. I would like to know your opinion on this. Thank's

[Rynalee]

I don't know. I have mixed feelings about all this. I used to be so restrictive with guns and stuff. If my preschool son got given a plastic toy gun as a birthday present, I would convince him to throw it away and I'd buy something else to replace it!! Needless to say, I've come a long way since then! That child is now 16 and he and his brothers like to play cames like Far Cry, Assassin's Creed etc. They play them a LOT!! Sometimes this bothers me. They shut themselves away in their room (we moved the Xbox out of our small lounge room because the noise of the games was really annoying and it was hard to get a chance for anyone else to use the room, since it was so often over-run with teenage boys playing loud fighting war games!). I don't really like the aggression that seems to build up in my 16yo son as he plays. Mind you, he gets pretty feisty about most Xbox games he plays (he takes it VERY seriously!).

We still feel the need to protect (in some way) our younger children, especially, from exposure to movies/games that depict violent or scary images. If they watch this kind of thing, they often have night mares for weeks, so it obviously affects them. I don't really like playing "Police Sargeant" and telling them "No, we really don't want you to play/watch this" but it feels like we'd be negligent if we just let them play/watch anything at all that they wanted to. Don't we have a responsibility to use our wisdom and experience of knowing what some of these games & movies are like, to protect their brains from images that they seem way too young to handle?

And then there are articles like the one below. I know that the media like the really play up the whole "gaming is bad" story, but the facts in this story seem to speak for themselves and it's quite distressing!

http://au.news.yahoo.com/a/-/mp/6892543/baby-starves-to-death-while...

Enjoying this discussion and wanting to think it through more,

Karen

[Joyce Fetteroll]

*** but the facts in this story seem to speak for themselves ***

If there were an article on how a passionate knife collector stabbed someone to death, would you assume the knives caused him to kill? How does that explain billions of people who also have knives and don't kill?

Society wants easy answers to serious problems. Video games are good scapegoats. But, the "easy" answer is kids need their parents to be kinder, more compassionate, more respectful, more present, to listen more and talk less, to love who their kids are rather than who the parents think they should be.

If how parents treat kids has no impact on the adults kids become, why are we putting in this much time to them? Let them raise themselves and we can go find our own selves.

Painting a picture when you only know a few facts means extrapolating and guessing to fill in everything else. It's like the blind men and the elephant . Did you assume the two came from loving, nurturing homes? Did you assume the only difference between this couple who could allow their baby to starve and you who can't conceive of ever doing that is they played video games?

I would absolutely positively bet that both of them had either untreated psychological problems or their parents were seriously disconnected from them as kids. Video games don't cause people to disconnect from life. But some people who are disconnected from life can find comfort in video games.

*** We still feel the need to protect (in some way) our younger children ***

There's a big difference in how children feel when

1) a parent stands between the child and the child's desire and

2) a parent removes themselves from the child's life to let them explore unfettered and

2) a parent stands beside a child helping them, when needed, to safely and respectfully explore what intrigues them.

*** If they watch this kind of thing, they often have night mares for weeks, so it obviously affects them ***

Are you not helping them with information about what's in a movie so they can make informed choices? (Screen It! is a good site.) (And it's okay if kids decide they want something despite the information. They need to keep testing their boundaries because their boundaries are constantly changing as they get older.)

Are you not there with them when they're watching? Are you not helping them with strategies to pause, take a break, fast forward, watch during the day, watch the making of documentaries? Are you not helping them be more powerful than the media?

Unschooling is the opposite of both authoritarian and hands off parenting. It's neither about creating rules to remote parent nor about letting kids jump off cliffs. It's about being more involved in kids lives. It's about accompanying them as they explore, helping them find safe, respectful and empowering ways to tackle what intrigues them.

*** I have mixed feelings about all this ***

Better than mixed feelings as a foundation for making choices is years of experience, observation of what really happens when these ideas are put into practice, and discussion and dissection of the ideas to figure out why kids who are treated with respect and helped to explore instead of controlled don't show the effects conventional society fears will happen.

If you've picked up the idea that unschooling is about letting kids go it alone, it will help you pull more and deeper understanding out of the posts by reading the archives here, reading Sandra's Radical Unschooling site, the TV page is a good place to start, and my Joyfully Rejoycing site. (Down the left hand side are several pages about TV and video games.)

[Meredith]

I don't really like the aggression that seems to build up in my 16yo son as he plays.

A certain amount of aggression goes with being a young male - it doesn't mean he's actually wanting to go out and be violent, it means he needs an outlet for some of that aggression! It might help you to see that the aggression is being let out, being used, rather than sitting under your guy's skin and building up stress.

My 16yo is a pretty sweet, kind soul and he's a young adult male, full of energy, some of it aggressive energy. When he was younger, and had trouble being explosive, we reeeeeaaaalllly worried about how he'd handle being a young adult, but he has the skills he needs to live in his own skin and feel his own feelings, without being overwhelmed by all that. When he's feeling pretty pumped up with testosterone, he does something big and physical, and in some ways aggressive - cutting wood with an axe is aggressive. Hammering hot metal in his forge is aggressive. Swinging a six foot fire staff is pretty aggressive! But none of them are harmful towards himself or other people.

[Meredith]

We still feel the need to protect (in some way) our younger children, especially, from exposure to movies/games that depict violent or scary images. If they watch this kind of thing, they often have night mares for weeks, so it obviously affects them.

What's violent? What's scary? From the perspective of a child, those things can be reeeeeallly different than what adults expect. My dd finds images of adults shouting at kids violent and scary. She used to enjoy watching CSI with me and was fascinated about the wonders of human anatomy, but she left the room during Bridge to Teribithia because the sight of a kid being yelled at by his parent horrified her.

Sometimes my dd wants to watch a movie I've let her know she might find scary - the Harry Potter movies are a good example. Lots of angry faces, and tense scenes with scary music (another trigger for her). But she sooooo wanted to watch the movies so she worked out some strategies. She watched previews, then the "special features" - interviews with actors, how-to special effects stuff, then watched the movies in another language, and finally was able to watch the whole movie all the way through. She still uses variations on that strategy with new movies she's not sure of. When the most recent Potter movie came out, she wanted to see it in the theater, so we talked about strategies for that, what she'd do if she got scared in the theater, with the final option being "and we can always go play arcade games in the lobby if its too bad". She was fine - having strategies, she was confident and felt in control of the situation.

That's the biggest issue with kids and tv/games, whatever - its better when They feel like they're in control. That makes sense, too. What's the scariest thing of all? Powerlessness.

[Aria Stewart]

Absolutely, Meredith!

[Rynalee]

Thanks for your wise words, Joyce & Meredith! I've plagiarised some of what you wrote about the news article in response to a friend's Facebook post and people's automatic claims of "Video games are therefore evil". Thank you for helping me to think about this a bit differently.

I think the idea of society wanting simple answers to complex problems also applies to the other issue I raised of us wanting to protect our children from "scary movies or video games". "Standing between them and what they want", as Joyce said, is a quick fix, seemingly easy solution. More time consuming, but probably with a far better long-term outcome, is to partner with them, to help them investigate the game or movie and, if they still want to watch it, to think of strategies to do that. I'm challenged by the reminder to do this! We do often try to do it that way. (We encourage our youngest child to close her eyes at the scariest bits, to help her to recognise the build-up of music so she can pre-empt what's coming etc.) We actually don't often "forbid". Often my husband will suggest that he watches it first and then he makes a decision about whether it's "appropriate". Better, perhaps, would be to watch it first and then DISCUSS it with the child/ren. I guess I still feel like in the end, though, it's perhaps the parent's responsibility to make a final decision? I KNOW it's "their life", but isn't it our job to guide and protect?

I admit to sometimes saying to one of my kids, who was feeling drawn to something that I perceived as violent/aggressive, "Why do you want to watch that anyway?", in such a way that it implies there's something wrong with them. I guess that judgment in itself is perhaps more damaging that the "violence" is anyway?

Thank you for challenging my thinking in this. I'm still processing it!

Karen

[Joyce Fetteroll]

*** I guess I still feel like in the end, though, it's perhaps the parent's responsibility to make a final decision? I KNOW it's "their life", but isn't it our job to guide and protect? ***

The fewer times a parent pulls the "Trust me, I know best" trump card, the better to maintain the children's trust.

Unlike spanking, I don't think parents should remove the power to override from their parenting tool box. But they should recognize that overriding damages relationships.

If a parent builds up a huge surplus of trust, that is, their advice is sound and is directed at helping a child explore rather than molding them to the parent's ideal, then when the parent pulls a "Trust me" in an emergency and can later explain why they needed to do that, that gets credited to the trustworthy account.

But when a parent pulls a "Trust me" when the child can't understand the reason for it, that's a withdrawal from the trustworthy account. One confusing "Trust me" doesn't withdraw much. But the second comes at a greater price. The third even greater. The closer the withdrawals are together, the more expensive they are. A half dozen, a dozen could easily diminish the account to the point the child questions anything the parent says. And it will take way way more than half dozen or dozen consecutive pieces of good advice to build the account back up to over flowing.

If you had a great money manager who had proven he made good choices over the years, a few missteps that lose you money you'd forgive. People are human. But how many missteps do you forgive? How many until his golden touch looks like flaking gilt and you start looking around for someone with better advice?

Control is an illusion. All a parent has is influence. If a parent blows a child's trust, the parent diminishes her ability to influence. And the child will be scooting around the parent, looking for a better advisor who will help him rather than be a roadblock.

*** I guess that judgment in itself is perhaps more damaging that the "violence" is anyway? ***

Damaging to the relationship, yes. How many "Why do you want to watch that anyway?"s would you like to hear from your husband about something you enjoyed? What I truly appreciate about my husband is he's wonderfully supportive of what I enjoy and want to spend time on even if it isn't something he sees value in for himself.

[Meredith]

I admit to sometimes saying to one of my kids, who was feeling drawn to something that I perceived as violent/aggressive, "Why do you want to watch that anyway?",

Something I've found helpful is asking that question of myself - why does my child want to do this thing? and consciously step away from my first reactions, my knee-jerk, worried-mom reactions while I think about it. Why do people enjoy watching and playing with violence? The worried-mom reaction is "something's wrong!" but what if nothing's wrong? What other reason could there be? Stepping away from my fears, I've gotten to see my kids play with violence as a way to think about ethics. What's good and bad? When is violence okay? What are extenuating circumstances? Complex human questions, really, and younger kids, especially can only really think about those things via play. Is it bad for Tigger to eat Piglet? I mean, he's a tiger...

I guess I still feel like in the end, though, it's perhaps the parent's responsibility to make a final decision? I KNOW it's "their life", but isn't it our job to guide and protect?

What are you trying to guide them towards and protect them from? That's something to think about. Along with that, consider why you think its necessary to guide and protect them - do you fear they'll be "sucked in" by violent images? Or are you trying to protect them from being scared?

Ahwile ago, Kill Bill came on one of the satellite channels and Ray (then 15) wanted to watch it - both movies, back to back. My partner and I had watched them late one night after the kids were asleep and we were both pretty worried about Mo seeing it... she was 7 at the time. I mentioned to her that it might be scary and had a lot of killing in it, and she wandered over to glance at the tv and see if it was something she wanted to see. She immediately picked up on something I'd missed when I'd watched it, which is that the first movie, in particular, has a very comic-book style to it. Mo reads a lot more comics than I do, though, and it was perfectly clear to her. She loved it. Watching her watch, I noticed so many things I'd missed when I'd watched the movie - how the music and setting is very very different from the usual action/killing flicks. I noticed how silly it was, seeing Mo and Ray laughing over scenes of mayhem and gore.

I could have guided her away from Kill Bill and protected her from that mayhem and gore, but it turned out I didn't have to. It wasn't what I thought it was!

[Rynalee]

With scary/violent movies, I think I'm trying to protect them from fear, from having scary images in their mind that are hard to get rid of and hard to deal with (this has happened).

With gaming where it's played over and over, I'm trying to protect them from de-sensitisation, from minimising the impact of violence (i.e. someone kills you and your character can just recover, get another life or whatever, or you can just run around killing people and it's ok so long as you win the game). I'm also concerned about the combination of pleasure and violence (it's fun to kill people, even if it's only a game, so they may actually associate those two things together which, in real life, could have huge ramifications).

They are some of my concerns and I'm trying to determine if they're unfounded. I don't know anyone in real life who has allowed their child to play these kinds of games or watch these kinds of movies, and the child is now grown up and ok. So yeah, I guess I'm looking for reassurance from some of you who are further ahead on the road than me. And I need to be able to pass some of that reassurance on to my husband who says, "Are we going to base what we do on a few people from America we've never even met?" It takes a lot of trust!

Does that make sense?

Karen

Meredith said:

I admit to sometimes saying to one of my kids, who was feeling drawn to something that I perceived as violent/aggressive, "Why do you want to watch that anyway?",

Something I've found helpful is asking that question of myself - why does my child want to do this thing? and consciously step away from my first reactions, my knee-jerk, worried-mom reactions while I think about it. Why do people enjoy watching and playing with violence? The worried-mom reaction is "something's wrong!" but what if nothing's wrong? What other reason could there be? Stepping away from my fears, I've gotten to see my kids play with violence as a way to think about ethics. What's good and bad? When is violence okay? What are extenuating circumstances? Complex human questions, really, and younger kids, especially can only really think about those things via play. Is it bad for Tigger to eat Piglet? I mean, he's a tiger...

I guess I still feel like in the end, though, it's perhaps the parent's responsibility to make a final decision? I KNOW it's "their life", but isn't it our job to guide and protect?

What are you trying to guide them towards and protect them from? That's something to think about. Along with that, consider why you think its necessary to guide and protect them - do you fear they'll be "sucked in" by violent images? Or are you trying to protect them from being scared?

[Sandra Dodd]

-=- And I need to be able to pass some of that reassurance on to my husband who says, "Are we going to base what we do on a few people from America we've never even met?" It takes a lot of trust!-=-

But right now your fears are based on trust that there is a great danger. You didn't come up with that "desensitization" argument on your own. You got it from a stranger.

Have you looked at that Gerard Jones article I linked earlier? Are you familiar with any of the writings about traditional fairy tales? Einstein said all kids would need would be fairy tales. Karl Jung and Bruno Bettleheim both wrote quite a bit about the benefits of those scary, violent stories to child development.

[Meredith]

I'm also concerned about the combination of pleasure and violence (it's fun to kill people, even if it's only a game, so they may actually associate those two things together which, in real life, could have huge ramifications).

Okay, that's clearer. I definitely found reading stories of unschoolers with kind kids, especially teens, helped me work through my own fears about topics like that. Both my kids enjoy video games. For awhile, my dd's favorite games were those where most of the "bad guys" to kill were animals, including cats. It was funny, because she Loves animals, especially cats, but she'd replay sections of the game over and over, killing whole animated packs and prides with gusto. Our own pets are in greater danger of being over-loved. I sometimes go and pour food back into the storage container so it doesn't go stale overflowing in the bowls, and most of Mo's artwork includes animals, especially the pets, generally with hearts all around the edges. Her cat has a birthday party about once a month, with a lovingly made present and home made decorations.

More recently she's moved on to games where the baddies are animated people, but she's no more violent personally. When she gets really made with her teenage brother, she insults him, but doesn't hit. I think the only time I've seen her hit recently was in a situation with another child where rough play got too rough for a little.

Last spring we went to a campout with about 30 other unschooling families, and The activity of choice for the 6-12yos was Nerf Wars. Groups of children roamed the campground in cardboard armor, but there was more speech-making than actual shooting most of the time, and negotiating rules and hostage trades. There were very clear boundaries, too, in terms of who to shoot - no-one without a gun in hand was shot as far as I know. That's better than most school kids I know will do, they'll take at least one shot just to test the rules. There were some hurt feelings over the course of the week, but few bruises, mostly from kids falling down. And since it was a group of unschoolers the vast majority had video games. Some had brought tvs and games systems on the campout!

Ray likes the sort of game where to get from one room or screen to another you have to generate a good bit of virtual carnage. He's 16, and as I said, he's not without aggression, but I don't think he's been in a fight since he was in school, four years ago. I know for sure he's spent lots more time playing hack-and-slash games since he left school, but he's more peaceful. That says a lot right there, and I've said to people who ask "what happened to Ray? he's so nice now?" We pulled him out of school. That's something to think about when you hear and read stories connecting video games and violence - is the kid in school? I've seen it make a Huge difference.

Back to Ray - he loves to skateboard, and I've seen him, when the skatepark is busy and there are guys looking for a fight, find ways to get Out of fighting - ways to back down, ways to put himself behind an adult even at the cost of some ego. He'd rather not fight. He'll argue! But physical violence doesn't interest him. Recently he got a skateboarding video game and I asked him what he liked about it. He said "watch" and proceeded to show me all the ways he could crash the character - run him into walls, mess up jumps, fall down stairs, and all with big splashes of animated blood. He laughed and laughed and told me it was Great to be able to crash over and over and over and not hurt anything or damage his board. The next day he went to the skatepark and picked up the usual pack of bruises. He has his own game system in his own room and could have played the game all day if he wanted, instead of go get himself bruised trying new tricks irl, but they aren't the same. Doing it on a computer Isn't doing it, its just pretend.

Pretend makes a big difference. Playing pretend is one of the ways people deal with needs and feelings that can't be dealt with irl. Most people don't Want to go around killing! But doing it in a pretend format is pretty darned popular. Video games aren't more violent than team sports! There's less chance of actually getting in a fistfight playing God Of War than going to a soccer match.

I'm trying to protect them from de-sensitisation, from minimising the impact of violence (i.e. someone kills you and your character can just recover, get another life or whatever, or you can just run around killing people and it's ok so long as you win the game).

Did you never play that way as a kid? I did - endless war games in the hills out behind the subdivision where we lived. Bang, you're dead. And a few minutes, at most, later, you were playing again. I'm not a violent person, now, and don't think I'm immortal. My partner, George isn't violent, either, and he grew up playing those same sorts of games in a city neighborhood. Bang, you're dead. It didn't make him want to join a gang, and there were some around where he lived.

With scary/violent movies, I think I'm trying to protect them from fear, from having scary images in their mind that are hard to get rid of and hard to deal with (this has happened).

It will happen! I'm not trying to make light of that, as I said, I do let my dd know if I think something will bother her, but some of that comes from her having been disturbed in the past and not wanting to repeat that experience. I know what upsets her because I've been wrong, didn't think a movie would trouble her and it did (and I don't recall what it was now, some feel good kids movie when she was little).

The images that have stuck in my own mind the worst haven't been from movies, and I'm a pretty darned visual person. The worst have been from things I've read or things people have told me, real things, "news" not stories. Stories are easier for me to set aside, because they aren't real. Life has horrors, and even hearing about them second and third hand is a completely different experience from playing out a similar scenario in a video game.