Video Games Violence (3): Parenting

While Tsoof was doing his assignment on video game violence, I was shocked with the level of violence the kids were exposed to and it really got me scared. By the end of it, he also showed me some statistics about parents and that got me even more scared.

Parents and video games

Here is a list of figures from a US research into parents’ involvement and attitude towards playing video games:

– 50% of parents play computer and video games with their children

– 93% of computer and video games are purchased or rented while the parents are present

– 88% of games are purchased by adults

– 72% of parents believe video games are “fun for the entire family”

– 71% of parents are asked to play by their kids

– 66% of parents believe computer and video games provide good opportunities for them to socialize with their kids

– 63% of parents believe computer games are a positive part of their kids’ life

– 50% of parents claim that playing computer and video games with their children provides good opportunities to monitor the game content
10% of parents never check the official rating of the computer and video games their kids use
Now, I ask you, would you not feel like there must be someone to blame? Do not feel devastated after reading these figures?

Did you know when reading such things, people use a defense mechanism that says “It won’t happen to me”. I did the same. I said to myself, “I’m OK. My kids are not exposed to video games. We have never purchased any computer game in our life. We don’t have a game console at home”. But this mechanism only gives us a false illusion that we are safe, because we are not.

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Video Games Violence (2): Video-game-inspired real violence

In the first chapter of the series, I wrote some facts about the gaming industry and some research regarding video games and violence. Here is a list of real life killings and acts of violence inspired by video games. You may even recognize some of them.

April 20, 1999: 18-year-old Eric Harris and 17-year-old Dylan Klebold killed 12 students and a teacher in the Columbine High School massacre. The two were allegedly obsessed with the video game Doom.

1 April 2000: 16-year-old Spanish teenager José Rabadán Pardo murdered his father, his mother and his sister as an “avenging mission” given to him by the main character of the video game Final Fantasy.

20 November 2001: 21-year-old American Shawn Woolley committed suicide after what his mother claimed was an addiction to EverQuest.

February 2003: 16-year-old American Dustin Lynch was charged with aggravated murder and used an insanity defense that he was “obsessed” with Grand Theft Auto III.

7 June, 2003: 18-year-old American Devin Moore shot and killed two policemen, inspired by the video game Grand Theft Auto: Vice City.

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Video Games Violence (1): Shock and Awe

This year, my 15-year-old son Tsoof had to do a school assignments in drama class. If you think Drama studies are all about playing, make belief or acting, they are not. He had to research a topic and present it in a special style and he worked really hard on this project. Gal and I felt happy and privileged to watch the whole process of this assignment and the way he grew from doing it.

Our kids do not play computer or video games that often (they are too busy ice skating, singing, playing music, dancing, playing sport and reading to have much time left for video games), so we did not expect this to make any difference to Tsoof, but it did big time.

We were shocked by how easy it was to find information on video games and violence. It is all there – all the proof for the negative and devastating effects of violent video games on our society. Yet, the spread of violent video games is increasing and things are getting worse.

I was not sure how to present Tsoof’s findings to you. I was debating whether to tell you my opinion or maybe there was no need. I think maybe just giving you some of the facts about it will be enough for you to understand the severity of the problem. As I believe that as parents, we have lots of power to change this horrible phenomenon. So sit back and be horrified!

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Parents Doing Business

I had my first business at the age of 25. I finished my Special Education studies and opened an Early Childhood Center that became a very successful business within a short time. I was a mother and a wife and had a mortgage, a car and a personal loan for my business.

If you hear parents tell you that kids are an obstacle for them, I can tell you that having kids is a bad excuse for not doing business. When the kids grow up and leave the house, they will be left with their excuses. So when they have to explain why they have never done what they have always wanted to do, they will start saying, “It’s too late now”, which is just another excuse.

If you are thinking of starting a business and will need to juggle business and family, it is a good idea to discover what you will have to do to succeed at it. Some people are not cut out to own and operate a business. Others do not know how to balance a home and a business. Managing your business, your home and your parenting well requires some skills and attitudes that will determine the success of your business, the quality of your family life and even your health.

Unlike people who do not have kids, business parents risk a lot more than their own time and money. They risk their relationships with their partners and with their kids, as well as the quality of preparation their kids get for life. You go into business because you want a better life for your kids, not to destroy your relationship with your kids, so do it right!

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Wisdom from the School of Life

In the “old days”, the elders had a special role in people’s life. Because knowledge back then was not the highest currency, what the elders could give their community was wisdom. Unlike knowledge, wisdom is applied knowledge, achieved after personal experience, experiments, trials and errors and often summed up as rules of living.

Much of our life today is dedicated to acquiring knowledge. School, where you spend about 13 years of your life, is a place that gives you knowledge. If you study a profession, you spend another 3 to 10 years of your life in a school of knowledge.

As an educator, I find most of this to be a total waste of energy. When I did my degree in Special Education, I took an amazing course named “Who needs school anyway?” You would think that the main idea is to teach us that school is the best thing and that everyone needs school, but our amazing lecturer allowed us to explore this topic from many angles. We all had to go and research what school is all about and in my research, I discovered that School was an institute that provided knowledge, but failed to give kids wisdom. School had forgotten its purpose.

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Teen Trouble?

Teenagers are typically portrayed by the media as feisty, obnoxious, disobedient and wild. Teens are often shown doing stupid things, generally in groups. Although the things reported may be close to the truth, those reports are selective and contribute to a negative image of teenagers in the general public.

To a great extent, this also affects parents of teenagers, who are being encouraged to consider every little friction and identity-building exercise on the teen’s part as part of their overall negative attitude to adults and authority.

Yesterday evening, however, Channel Ten in Australia showed a piece titled “Teen Trouble?” in which a mother and her 3 wonderful teenagers were interviewed, having gone through Ronit’s coaching programs. Ronit was also interviewed as a parenting expert with some tips on how to get along well with teenage children and build strong relationships with them.

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Competition, Perfection or Happiness

This week, Ronit and I had a discussion on the difference between competition and perfection, or rather between being competitive and being a perfectionist. We were talking about how happy we were that our children we neither of those now, although they had been when they were younger.

This got me thinking that many parents raise their kids to be competitive or to strive for perfection, not realizing there was a third alternative, which helps the kids build their self-esteem and lead a relaxed and happy life. So I wanted to share with you my take on all 3 options and what you can do for your kids through your parenting and personal example.

Competitive people compare themselves with others all the time. Am I as pretty as Betty? Am I as strong as Josh? Am I as smart as Clarissa? Can I draw as well as Billy?

Perfectionists compare themselves against imaginary standards. While some rules are written clearly and are the same for everyone, perfection is a personal matter and a perfectionist’s rules of how things should be are typically not written anywhere or accepted by anyone else.

Do you do either of these? If so, what can you do instead?

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Teenage Problems

I have heard a lot about angry teenagers (some even call them troubled teenagers). People talk about teenagers being angry as some natural phenomenon, but I often find there is nothing natural about it and teenage problems are caused by things that can be changed.

One of my clients had an angry teenager at home until recently. Olivia was only 12 years old and very, very, very angry. Her mom, Nancy, who was trapped by the “teenage problems” belief, did nothing for a while. All her friends said it was normal (“You know, teens these days…”), so she just waited for the teenage years to pass and prepared herself for when her two younger kids would go through it too.

But then Nancy met another client of mine who told her, “It doesn’t have to be like that. You should go and see Ronit”. So she came to one of my parenting workshops. After the workshop, she had some hope that maybe it was not normal for “teenagers these days” to be so angry and that maybe she could help her daughter relax.

Shortly after, Nancy told me, “There was something you said to me during the parenting workshop that made a huge shift with my daughter. I was convinced all teenagers were the same, but I realized that I could help my daughter if I only changed some of the things I was doing myself. It really worked!”

Olivia had been seeing a psychologist for a while, trying to make a big decision, but without any results. After the parenting workshop, Nancy went to the psychologist and asked her to try one of my strategies. It took only one session for Olivia to make her mind up and Nancy came to see me, hoping she could make more changes in her teen daughter’s attitude and life.

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What Teens Want

Many parents are frustrated because they think their sweet children turned into monsters when they entered the teen years. I do not think my parents said the same thing about me, because I was worse when I was younger, but working with so many parents in my workshops, I often hear them say, “How could my gorgeous baby turn so nasty?” and “What do our teenagers really want from us?”

Teens mostly want you to get off their back, actually. Grownups pump them with their own frustrated teenage experiences and turn them into the black sheep of our society.

When parents ask me that, I usually ask back, “What did you want from your parents as a teenager?” For some unknown reason, most people cannot recall what they wanted from their own parents. It is as if they forgot how they behaved as soon as they became parents.

At first, I t thought it was the passing years that faded parents’ memories, but the more I think about it, the more I believe it is a form of denial – a kind of selective memory. Every time I hear parents say, “Teens today are worse than the teens in the past”, I show them research, which found out parents today think about their kids and teens exactly what their parents thought about them 25-30 years earlier. Exactly the same!

This means that today’s parents did not know what they wanted when they were teens, which is why they have no clue what their kids want now.

Still, it is a very good question.

Working with teenagers, I have had many reminders of what teens really want. I have written some of the answers in my book Be Special Be yourself for Teenagers, but today, I want to tell you about another discovery I have made.

I read this story about King Arthur and the witch and thought that although it talks about women, it is actually relevant to teens and humans in general.

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Your Inner Child

Last night, Ronit and I went out on our weekly date and watched a film called Oranges and Sunshine about a British social worker who uncovers the deportation of many children from England to Australia over many years.

The movie suggests that the British government was helping the Australian government keep Australia white and reducing its own population of poor people by shipping children in foster care and orphanages to Australia, where they were supposed to be educated and then allowed to live as citizens.

What actually happened (according to the movie) was that these children were used as slave labor and abused physically, sexually and emotionally. They grew up to be confused, troubled adults who wondered about their identity, felt rejected and abandoned by their parents and betrayed by the people who were meant to care for them.

For me, both Ed’s story and Oranges and Sunshine brought up a really troubling question, “How can anyone abuse a child?”

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