Anonymous wrote:None of the highest achieving boys from DS's graduating class at Sidwell were gamers or anything close to it.

We can argue about causation / correlation -- ie, maybe the boys who are teaching themselves multiple instruments, designing experiments for fun, going to culinary school as a teen etc -- are not the sort of young people who would be drawn to staring a screen in a fiction world created by some dude in Menlo Park.

I know that for our household, DS wasn't interested in gaming although we dutifully bought him the correct consoles as gifts without him even asking. They gathered dust. BUT his peers at not-Sidwell elementary school certainly made gaming the center of their social lives. Gaming and soccer were their only passions grades 1 through ~7.

All to say OP, consider what kind of boy you have. Does addiciton to -anything- run in your families? Then I'd keep a short leash on the gaming. Does your kid have ADHD? Same thing. Otherwise, think ahead to what kind of young men you want to raise. Doers? or watchers?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think depriving a kid of something pop culture that literally all other kids do is going to be harmful unless it’s legitimately part of an overall alternative family culture. Like I have a brilliant friend whose parents were Russian Jewish intellectual refugees in the 70s who never watched TV in the US because they spoken Russian and did art and read books instead. She’s a unique individual from a unique background. That’s much different from purposefully isolating your kid from what all of their peers are doing just to ward off some imagined bad result.

Let them have video games. Go ahead and put strict limits on it, but unless you are a goat-farming off-the-grid family on a commune, you shouldn’t force your kid to be so different.

I guess you guys will think I’m a whack job when I tell you he only watches about a half hour of tv every couple months and we don’t own an iPad. I don’t think of us as having an alternate lifestyle though. One of my siblings was absolutely electronics obsessed, which is why I have tried to keep video games and tablets out of the house.

DS stays pretty busy with activities in and out of the home, and he does cultural school on Sunday. And early to bed. Off days he likes legos and building, or else reading his junky kid books and petting the cat. That all seems normal to me. If he sees friends playing outside he runs out and they kick a ball around. He does get more screen and video games sometimes when he visits friends’ houses which I am fine with.

But I keep hearing from different people and reading here that “They all play video games now” and that I have to give in lest he be a social pariah.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think depriving a kid of something pop culture that literally all other kids do is going to be harmful unless it’s legitimately part of an overall alternative family culture. Like I have a brilliant friend whose parents were Russian Jewish intellectual refugees in the 70s who never watched TV in the US because they spoken Russian and did art and read books instead. She’s a unique individual from a unique background. That’s much different from purposefully isolating your kid from what all of their peers are doing just to ward off some imagined bad result.

Let them have video games. Go ahead and put strict limits on it, but unless you are a goat-farming off-the-grid family on a commune, you shouldn’t force your kid to be so different.

I guess you guys will think I’m a whack job when I tell you he only watches about a half hour of tv every couple months and we don’t own an iPad. I don’t think of us as having an alternate lifestyle though. One of my siblings was absolutely electronics obsessed, which is why I have tried to keep video games and tablets out of the house.

DS stays pretty busy with activities in and out of the home, and he does cultural school on Sunday. And early to bed. Off days he likes legos and building, or else reading his junky kid books and petting the cat. That all seems normal to me. If he sees friends playing outside he runs out and they kick a ball around. He does get more screen and video games sometimes when he visits friends’ houses which I am fine with.

But I keep hearing from different people and reading here that “They all play video games now” and that I have to give in lest he be a social pariah.

Anonymous wrote:I think depriving a kid of something pop culture that literally all other kids do is going to be harmful unless it’s legitimately part of an overall alternative family culture. Like I have a brilliant friend whose parents were Russian Jewish intellectual refugees in the 70s who never watched TV in the US because they spoken Russian and did art and read books instead. She’s a unique individual from a unique background. That’s much different from purposefully isolating your kid from what all of their peers are doing just to ward off some imagined bad result.

Let them have video games. Go ahead and put strict limits on it, but unless you are a goat-farming off-the-grid family on a commune, you shouldn’t force your kid to be so different.

Anonymous wrote:I played video games all the time as a kid, still playing plenty, and I'm a healthy well adjusted adult with a job and a family. It's not a big deal.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think depriving a kid of something pop culture that literally all other kids do is going to be harmful unless it’s legitimately part of an overall alternative family culture. Like I have a brilliant friend whose parents were Russian Jewish intellectual refugees in the 70s who never watched TV in the US because they spoken Russian and did art and read books instead. She’s a unique individual from a unique background. That’s much different from purposefully isolating your kid from what all of their peers are doing just to ward off some imagined bad result.

Let them have video games. Go ahead and put strict limits on it, but unless you are a goat-farming off-the-grid family on a commune, you shouldn’t force your kid to be so different.

We don’t play video games. A lot of kids don’t. I guess it depends on your circles but it’s not common in ours.

My oldest is 10, hasn’t asked for games yet. He plays at friend's homes occasionally and thinks it’s fun, but not fun enough to ask to do it at home.

Anonymous wrote:I think depriving a kid of something pop culture that literally all other kids do is going to be harmful unless it’s legitimately part of an overall alternative family culture. Like I have a brilliant friend whose parents were Russian Jewish intellectual refugees in the 70s who never watched TV in the US because they spoken Russian and did art and read books instead. She’s a unique individual from a unique background. That’s much different from purposefully isolating your kid from what all of their peers are doing just to ward off some imagined bad result.

Let them have video games. Go ahead and put strict limits on it, but unless you are a goat-farming off-the-grid family on a commune, you shouldn’t force your kid to be so different.