How To "Console" a child

I'm pretty sure we had been washing cars for about five hours. My younger cousin and one of the neighbor kids were selling lemonade at the corner of our street. If we were lucky they would make at the most ten bucks. We were at $12.50 from washing cars and that was only because one guy felt sorry for us and gave us a five dollar bill. It was getting late and the store closed soon.

We counted up all the earnings and surprisingly we had enough. My older cousin and one of the neighbor kids took off to the store on there bikes. About 40 minutes later they returned. 

THEY GOT IT!!!! 

 Street Fighter II for Super Nintendo!!

For the next week we had tournaments. There was about ten of us so it wasn't a lot of play time but it was an event!!

There was screaming,teasing, fighting, food, crying, laughing and of course cheering. There were bets, dares, and more important then anything else there was rules and if you broke them you were likely to get a "Hadoken" to the face. 

That was over twenty years ago. Today kids get games by the handfuls and most likely they are NOT buying themselves. Let alone scrubbing cars for them. 

They are not about karate and " Flawless Victories" any more. They are extremely realistic and life consuming. They are intense and the average kid/teenager plays for 13.8 hours a week. Yep almost 2 hours a day. A child is in school for 8 hours and then 2 hours of gaming, add in the 12 hours of sleep they should be getting that leaves 2 hours to eat, bath,homework and oh yeah physical activity. Most children are not engaging with other children while playing. This is an isolated experience they are having with violent and meaningless experiences.

I hear parents yelling at there kids to get off there games, phones,IPads, kindles, and computers but are just as quick to walk away with no follow through, thankful for the electronic babysitters. 

 I think for some of us we remember playing video games with friends or family. The innocence of  "1ups" and reaching the next level linger in our minds. The comradeship of working together to "save the princess" is what we were hoping for, for our children when we bought them those little black boxes from hell. 

And I would like to be perfectly clear I understand that there are video games that are NOT violent and negative. Games with no killing and murder. I get that BUT it's the idea of playing ALONE and how much they play on 

their IPhone by themselves,

their DS by themselves,

their computer by themselves!!!

They no longer plug their shit in and take turns blowing on their games to get them working. They are flying solo in a world that is becoming less and less real life. 

So to the parents who are fine letting their child get lost in a virtual world I just ask from one parent to another........