How Would You Handle It? Hypocritical Mom of Video Game Playing Teen Edition
I’m a day off the schedule because I wanted to promote Jeannie Campbell’s new site yesterday. However most Thursdays until I run out of questions I plan to ask a question and look for your responses here and across social media on how you would handle it.
Did you miss last week? Here is the question.
Here is this week’s question.
In a couple of months our oldest will be an official teenager. He is gifted like his dad in computers and enjoys video games. He is a spiritually sensitive person, like me. What music and movies many of you can watch without issue really affects us. Yet, he’s a boy and he likes doing guy things.
Did I mention he likes video games?
I feel like a complete hypocrite because I allow him to play T rated games under my supervision that deal with war time situations. The example I allow is Civil War. He is a huge fan of the Civil War and although the goal is to eliminate your opponent I let it slide because a lot of history is shown throughout the game. I kind of justify the violent aspect of it because this is history, not random contemporary men but soldiers who indeed battled.
He now has X Box Live and has let me know when he logs on and sees his friends playing they are always playing Call of Duty or some kind of military’ish game set in contemporary times. Thing is, those games are rated M and I’m not okay with that. His friends say there is an option to turn off the blood and words. With the game I allow him to play the weapons are up close but the consequences are not. With Call of Duty and games like it I know it can be very visual and as a Christian family with easily affected kids, I’ve drawn the line.
How would you handle this? Would you call a mom a hypocrite who lets a child play Civil War but not Call of Duty? You can absolutely agree to disagree, there is no right/wrong answer, we all have our convictions. I just want to see…How would you handle it?
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I totally respect your choice to allow the one and not the other. I am appalled by a LOT of the games out there today that are made to look more and more realistic. Do we really want to desensitize our children to violence? I think that your reasoning is sound, especially since you said the one you allow is rated T and the other ones are rated M…BIG difference in my book! Follow your gut Momma and don’t back down!
I was hoping I’d hear from you, so glad you stopped by. For all that I learned tonight that during the overnight my son is on the games will probably be out. I told him I can’t monitor you, you know what you put in your mind stays there so be warned. He said he played one game before but they turned everything off that was bad and it made it look like the game he has here. I still am not sure if this is good. God help me! Thanks for reading.
It’s comforting to know there is a parent who actually cares what video games their kids play. I am ASTONISHED by the complete lack of supervision there is when it comes to media/video games/ movies/ tv, etc. I guess my question would be– if you don’t allow him to watch R rated movies, I don’t think I could justify Call of Duty. That stuff is graphic… unnecessarily so. All in the name of making it look “real”.
Holly, thank you, that is very wise counsel. As a rule he does not do R movies, we did allow snippets of Passion of the Christ but absolutely NOT when it was violent.
The video game choices are way more difficult than I ever thought. I appreciate you reading and sharing!
It is good to know that you allow your son to play such video games, many teenagers now a days are more particular to play video games when they got home from school and assignments are being reject and it has a big effect to their education but it’s all about parental advice and I know you take control of it.
There nothing wrong in playing video games but still it needs parental guidance so that teens will never became addict in playing of those video games.