Parents, how do you handle kids & mature games?
polycounter lvl 17
Just some thoughts I had on when your kid is little, how does this affect your gaming or what games you expose your child to? I was a little kid when I first saw Terminator and several other rated R movies, but I was wondering if any of the parents here have changed their gaming habits when they have a little toddler around, or do you just try to get some alone time away from the child for playing the more violent games?
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I remember watching evil dead and nightmare on elm street with my dad when I was little and I turned out ok
As far as Games Go, I wait for them to go to bed before I play Resident evil 4 or any GTA stuff. It's not even really the violence mostly, It's Gore and it's the Language. Kids repeat anything they hear, and I refuse to have Foul mouthed Kids in my home.
When I was young (in the 3-5 area) I watched movies like Aliens, Predator, Terminator and just about any other movie that was soakd in blood. However my parents confirmed to me at a very young age that this is all fake. I even played games like Doom and Wolfenstien when they were still shareware at the age of 8 or so. Without parental supervision, because I knew it was just pretend.
It seems parents will sooner shelter their kids from any sort of violence before they will tell them that it's not real. Which is really the problem in my opinion.
But like I said, I'm not a parent. So I don't fully know.
I never let them play violent games or watch movies with violence without me being there, explaining to them what's happening, and that it's a movie/game.
I feel that having them watch the news is a far greater play with their psyche than the most violent games available.
Then again, so far, the most violent game that I've bought is like.. ehhh... Rayman 3. lol.
He isn't exactly the brightest bulb in the pack though so I can only expect so much... He just bought it for them because they are obsessed with cars, and play anything with driving in it.
Well... there was that one time in fifth grade that I started hearing Wolfenstein sound effects when I was out on the playground, but other than that, nothing.
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Or like that time that I got hurt and decided to eat a sandwich that was laying on the ground so it would heal me.
On the other hand, a lot of the other guys at the sleepover weren't in the least bothered by the violence, and I think their parents exposed them to anything and everything from an early age. None of THEM are serial killers these days either... I guess it just seems sad in retrospect to be SO desensitized SO early.
I dont let my kids watch Robocop or Nightmare on Elm street because I dont need Kids Coming into my room at 4 in the morning saying Freddy is in thier closet.
It's just as much Practical Parenting as it is Sheltering my kids. They will run into that crap Later In life But not in our home.
Or like that time that I got hurt and decided to eat a sandwich that was laying on the ground so it would heal me.
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Damn that blake stone and his sandwich healing abilities
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here was that one time in fifth grade that I started hearing Wolfenstein sound effects when I was out on the playground, but other than that, nothing.
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Did you hump walls for secrets too?
He's getting an Xbox and Scooby Doo from me for Xmas.
Did you hump walls for secrets too?
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Well yes, but that didn't have anything to do with secrets or Wolfenstein
With my nephews I can be a big kid but I don't check my brain at the slide. After all they are my brothers kids and I can take comfort in the fact that I can't screw them up too bad since they aren't mine. I doubt I'll have it all worked out by the time I have kids but I'll figure something out.
I really think thats all that a parent should be doing when it comes to this. The parents need to establish what is and isn't okay for their child to do, say swearing for example. If the kid starts playing games on Xbox Live and all of a sudden he's speaking the way that 14 year olds do on Live, then the parents can take action. I would say it is a much better route to take, letting kids understand the difference between real life and game life.
Seriously though, I play Oblivion with her all the time, she does the wandering, flower picking, magic and so on, when the fighting starts i hit them for her but I always have an enchanted life detect object so that the scary faces are flurred out pink.
I play the Lost Planet demo with her and she can do half the first level of LaraCroft Legend by herself almost now.
Generally I really don't worry , I ensure I am always there to guide and mentor and explain things the right way.
That said, she won't get to play Gears of War with me, though she did giggle a lot at the chainsaw scenes in the 360 trailers which made me wonder as its cartoon violence , she might be fine with that, I'll play through first to check though.
I won't play Dead Rising with her and I will NEVER let her view games like the Bioshock trailer or Silent Hill series because I see those as genuinely scary and they feature warped 'human' monsters and themes involving people genuinely being evil to each other.
Mostly I just see all the media noise about kids and games as just noise. My girl is very inteligent and empapthic and kind so I don't worry that she is going to think the bad things in games are fun things to do to people in the real world.
She spent a while pretending to hunt the squirrels in the backyard like we hunt the bad goblins in Oblivion, she sneaked round her mum and said 'shhh, the music's changed' then continued sneaking round her and the tree.
I explained to my wife that in the game the music changes when someone bad is nearby so she was playacting.
I think the playacting that comes from games is healthy, it promotes thought and empathy and allows a child to playthrough the experiences in a safe environment that might better prepare them for real world happenings without such a sense of terror or shock as they've already had time to work through the rules to speak of bad behaviour.
r.
I agree.
Basically I don't expose them uneccesarily to intense content. My wife and I give our kids enough info and guidance so they can develop their own self confidence and their own common sense. The more control they feel they have, the better they become.
I will say this, as a 7 year old my mother let me stay up with my older brother late on night when alien(and also for the Twillight zone movie) aired on late night telly, and sure it scared the bleeping jeebus out of me(and so did twilight zone obviously) but if it wasnt for that experience I dont think I would be the same person as I am today with a love for sci-fi and computer games, and I wouldnt change that for the world!:) and I also believe that "profanity" (we dont really use that word much in sweden) isnt a bad thing, it spices up the language, and I dont see why "protecting" children from something they are gonna encounter anyway is nessescarily a good thing. Its better to let them see it, hear and then explain to them the correct(and many) uses of the word "fuck" for example, as its really the most versitale word in the english language!
maybe ill change my viewpoint when/if I(god forbid) become a parent, but I believe that children are much smarter than we give them credit to be.
oops dang, I did it anyway!
If my 5 year old said "fuck" at a friend's house or at school, we would certainly hear an earfull about it from the parents and teachers.
I'm personally at odds with the general morality in the US of forbidding nudity but allowing bloody gore.
but my cousins were bought alot of viloent games GTA when they were <10 and were allowed to play them alone, just because they were "games" and thus completely harmless in the eyes of my uncles and aunties wjo had last played pong, and wernt interested in what they were buying said kids.
the name "Game" is just not appropraite for alot of the experiences available out there.
We didn't expose our kids to mature content until they were older (meaning teens). Our internet controls centered around having all computers used by the kids be in a public, monitored area of the house. The kids were in senior high school before we allowed them to have computers in their bed rooms.
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That is totally the plan the wife and I have for our kids.
The question I do have though is what about when they are at a friend's house? How can you be certain that their freind's parents are not letting them play inappropriate games, watch porno movies and chat with pedophiles on the internet?
I probably will wait until my kid's bedtime to play the violent games for a good while, but once he starts getting exposed to such things I'll give him the facts an unopinionated as possible...
I'd be watching some action movie with the family and my father would say "hey, you know if you bash James Bond over the head with a chair like that, he's gonna die for sure or be paralysed for life. It's just a movie". And even as a little kid I'd understand perfectly well what he meant.
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My brother on the other hand was exactly like your dad. He was more of a parent to me than both my parents combined. He was 6 years older than me and I was able to do things other kids my age couldn't because he let me tag along on is adventures around the neighborhood. We did end up moving around quite a bit and sometimes there wheren't kids our own ages so it was just the two of us at times. He was always explaining things and looking out for me. I was pretty independant and wanted to do things on my own without help. He understood that telling me not do something and not explaining why was the fastest way to get me to do something. Something my parents never did. The standard answer to the question "why" was "because I said so". Something that pissed me off to no end. Looking back on it I think my parents thought I was questioning thier authority when I asked why, but I really did just want to know why 9 times out of 10.