Quote:
Originally Posted by shcisamax
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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I "hear you". Our daughter and her husband (ditto for our son and his wife) rarely, if ever, watch television.......the older children are kept so busy between school activities, sports, community and church activities and just "playing in the great outdoors".....swimming, kayaking, ice skating, skiing, mountain biking, climbing, you name it....they are OUTDOORS doing it..........when they were really little, they only watched a few selected shows on public television or old reruns of Little House on the Prairie, The Waltons, etc.........our other grandchildren are babies so again, they are not exposed to violence at all.
But, you are correct in your observations.........
p.s. The reason I purchased the stack of Wii games from Amazon, was for some "down time" while they were visiting and they did come in handy on a rainy day.
But in very limited amounts. Grandson had loved all the Indiana Jones leggo sets we got him and they all read the entire series of Harry Potter books...........
Not to mention, the "cartoonish" characters on the Wii boxes didn't hint at the intensity within the game......once one got to various levels. Still they were for kids.