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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People are Dying!

My friend said to me, “Look around you. There are more sick people than there ever were. The food we are eating is not nutritious enough. There is too much antibiotics in meat, too much processed food and too much cancer. People are dying because of extra use of chemicals in their life. What’s your opinion?”

I had to make a decision on the spot. I knew she wanted me to support her for her kids to recognize it as something “all mothers think”, not just her being fanatic. The problem was that it was just her being fanatic.

I said, “Really?! I am looking around and I’ll tell you what I see. My dad is 77 years old and he is a pretty healthy person. My mom is 71 years old and loves doctors and medication. 6 years ago, she came to visit us and we travelled around the North Island of New Zealand for 12 days. We spent most of the day on our feet and even trekked (with then 3-year-old Noff) for about 6 hours. My mom did very well and she was 65 then. My dad did even better than she did and he was 72 years old. I am looking around and what I see is that those sick people who eat junk, food that is not nutritious enough, consume too much antibiotics with their meat and gobble up cancer-inducing processed food, those people live longer”.

Ouch!

Before you think I am crazy, here are the facts.

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Kids Leading Social Change

Next month, for the second time, I am taking a group of 50 student leaders from 7 schools to a leadership camp called “Kids Leading Social Change”. The reason I gave the program this name is that I believe kids can lead social change.

One of my 11th Grade teachers told me that if I make a difference in the lives of four people and they make a difference in the lives of four people each, and the cycle of change continues, after a very short time, we will make this world a better place.

Six kids who attended the previous camp organized other students from their school, with the help of their chaplain, and wrote an intergenerational play for elders. They performed their play during Senior Week in front of 400 elders. My teacher said I needed to change only four people, but soon after that camp, I had reached over 400.

When I prepared the camp for them last year, I searched the Internet for things kids can do to make a difference and found a great big list of kids and their ideas for making a difference. I have added my ideas at the bottom of the list and I hope that after next month’s camp, I will add more.

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Top Parenting Bloggers Discuss (12): Parenting Boys and Girls

Gender is no doubt a huge factor in parenting. Many parents would like to know their baby’s gender before it is born, because gender matters to them. In our society, the role of girls and women is different from the role of boys and men. It is hard to ignore these roles and treat kids equally, because in the eyes of our society they are not equal.

So what should we do? Should we parent our kids differently if they are boys or girls or should we treat them just the same?

Research on people’s attitude towards boys and girls has found that parents and adults generally treat boys and girls differently even when they are just babies. In a famous research done with a group of babies that were dressed in pink or blue (without any relation to their real gender) the researchers discovered that the pink babies (presumably the girls) were picked up more by the adults and received more eye contact than the blue babies (presumably the boys).

How do you think this translates to parenting?

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Top Parenting Bloggers Discuss (1): Introduction

Have you ever wondered who inspires me?

Well, I thought about this and realized there were parents’ bloggers whose writing I love to read and they inspire me to be the best I can be, because this is their motto too – to be the best parents they can be.

I think these top parenting bloggers are at peace with what they believe, while they appreciate other philosophies. I think they are passionate about what they do and all of them strive to help others make the parenting journey a happy, healthy and joyous adventure, which makes them the top parenting bloggers by my definition.

So for the next 14 weeks, the top parenting bloggers will be discussing different aspects of parenting right here on Family Matters.

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How to break bad beliefs with doubt

A year ago, I became the Queensland state coordinator for Together for Humanity Foundation. The foundation works in schools with grade 4 to 12 kids to fight racism and inspire cultural openness. It turns out that, out of 50,000 kids in Australia who have participated in the program, over 90% have had racist attitudes towards other cultures.

It may be hard for you to accept, but most kids are racist because they live in a racist society, in which stereotyping is a survival mechanism. It is not surprising to read their surveys and discover they think “Muslims are scary” and “Asians sell drugs”, mainly because they are exposed to this type of information at home or in the media.

Whenever I ask the kids, “Have you ever personally met a scary Muslim or seen an Asian selling drugs?” their answer is “No”.

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The Universe is Trying to Tell Me Something

Have you ever heard something over and over again from different, unrelated sources and you have said, “Wow, what a coincidence. I read about this yesterday” or “I got an email about this just last week”?

Well, when I get so many “coincidences” like that in a short time, I think the Universe is trying to tell me something.

One particular coincidental chain started a long time ago, when I was a kid. I listened to a “pirate” radio called “The Voice of Peace”, which played one commercial over and over again, saying “Water. Drink only water”. While they still played sponsored commercials for coke and other soft drinks, they ran this one more frequently than anything and did not get paid for it.

I loved the idea of that radio station, which promoted peace, and I loved the fact that they encouraged people to be healthy, unlike other stations that were selling air time to the highest paying advertiser.

When I was 18, I attended a workshop for girls about the world of cosmetics. Our presenter told us that if we wanted to have soft skin (“like a baby’s bum”), we needed to drink plenty of water, regardless of the price of the moisturizer we bought. Well, 3 of us experimented with this and, just like she said, after only a week, everyone commented on our wonderful, glowing skin.

But these things alone did not seem like they were going anywhere yet.

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TV Diet (1): Too Much TV?

Time and time again, when I ask parents about the things they fight with their kids over, too much TV always features on the list. I know it scares me that my kids watch too much TV, so I think it is a good idea to put some order into the TV topic.

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Homeless World Cup

If you watch any news broadcast or read any newspaper, it is very easy to get a doom and gloom feeling on a daily basis. In fact, bad news seems to be propagated a lot faster than good news in the workplace, in social circles and on social media sites (many of the most popular articles seem to be horrible). This is why I was so excited to find the Homeless World Cup.

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Let’s Divorce After I Get My Period

My client Meg came today very emotional and sad. She had been successfully working on her relationship with her husband for over 3 months but doubts had crept in after a serious argument.

Meg has been with her husband for over 10 years. When he started talking about having kids, she started talking about divorcing.

“I do not know if we love each other anymore. We don’t have fun together, the sex is not what it used to be”, she thought and came to me for coaching to make the decision about staying or leaving.

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