Our kids spent their first 8 years in Mexico. I have a very good friend who is a psychologist. When she came to visit, she was amazed how able the kids were able to play independently and find something to do rather than be scheduled to do something. They had no video games. I think they watched Pokomon on TV when it finally hit Mexico. When we returned, all the boys in our area had video games and I was caught in this constant battle with my son about why we didn't have all those games. It was apparent, the parents were in total denial. I found myself asking before a "playdate" (I didn't even know what a play date was) what will they be doing? If the answer was, or my son later told me, video games were part of the experience, I limited his time at that house in the future. It became very difficult because literally ALL the boys were playing video games. I finally broke down and bought the player and a couple games but NEVER ones with violence. I don't know how anyone can't see that watching and participating in violence for play is the most stupid thing you can allow your child to do. And I am not talking about cowboys and indians so please don't draw that correlation. It simply doesn't meet the gory standard that the video games present. Does life imitate art or does art imitate life? I think at this point, we can safely say that while art can imitate life, in these cases, life imitates art. They didn't think up this stuff on their own.
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