I felt angry when I saw this commercial. The judgmental and
manipulative nature of the whole thing really got to me. The kids are totally
set-up; it's very disrespectful. Here are all these people, including the kids,
sharing happy memories of ways in which they spend their time. Everyone is
talking about what they enjoy, and then the parents CRY when they watch the
videos of their kids! It's so sad. Imagine being so disconnected from your
child that you don't even know, let alone value, their play! And yet,
the most distressing part about it is that the point of the commercial is that
the parents are right! We should all buy granola bars and force our kids
to stop playing so many video games. That doesn't sound like a recipe for peace
and well-being. And, of course, the irony and hypocrisy of the whole thing is
that it was promoted through Youtube and Facebook! It is a video!
The way it made the rounds of social media, and the comments
I read about it from people my age and older, were generally in agreement with
the video - of course this is sad and bad and disturbing and must be changed!
Of course, there is no problem with forcing kids into an classroom for
seven to eight hours, five days a week, as we can safely assume all the kids in
the video are made to do; the problem is what they choose to do with
their limited leisure time!
I am grateful that I don't feel that way. But, I admit, there
was a time when I did.
TECHNOLOGY AND "SCREEN-TIME"
It's hard to think of a broader term than
"technology." The latest, hottest, most exciting technology that many
of us encounter on a regular basis is computer technology, but crockpots, shoes,
cars and flashlights are all technology, too. Everyone here knows this, I
suspect, but it is important to take a moment to acknowledge it. Tool use is a
huge part of what makes us human. When I see a video of a crow, or an ape, or
an octopus using a tool, it's exciting because I identify with it. The
development and use of tools is an important form of intelligence. I could
easily fill up this hour showing video clips of tool use.
Lots of tools have sticks, handles, switches; all levers. And
yet it is obviously silly to segregate one set of tools as having levers and
consider them as interchangeable - hand me a lever. What type of lever? A
first, second or third degree lever? What should be attached to it? What is it
for?
And yet, when you read that the title of this presentation
was "Growth and Connection through Technology," I bet you all knew I
meant computers and televisions.
I have a dictionary on a table in my grandmother's cottage in
Rhode Island. It was printed in 1964. If you look up the word
"computer," the first definition is "person who computes."
When I was in fifth grade, I think, we got an Apple 2GS in our classroom; we
played Oregon Trail and Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego. My parents
bought a 386 which ran PC-MOS/MS-DOS. I used it to play Marble Madness. I
wasn't allowed to play Leisure Suit Larry in the Land of the Lounge Lizards,
which of course I did at every available unsupervised opportunity.
Big gray boxes are the first image in my mind when I think of
computers. That's the first indication that I need to step away from my biases
about what computing means to my kids, and try to see it from their
perspective.
When people use the word "screen-time," they are
lumping all electronic visual media into a woefully inadequate pigeon hole. It
minimizes the value of these tools, in their own minds and to their children,
and limits their ability to grow and connect through and with this amazing
world that is so important to the kids (and others) who love and use these
wonderful machines.
So if you say "screen-time," think about not saying
that anymore. You wouldn't say "paper-time" or
"lever-time." What is your child doing? Don't focus on the medium,
focus on the activity. Is it a show? What show? Watch it together. Ask
questions, engage with the characters, and listen, the way you would do about
any other activity of interest. Is it a you-tube video? That can be anything.
What's the video about or of? Is there a host, a "you-tuber"? Who is
that person to your child? Is it a video game? Is it on-line? Learn to play it.
Sit and watch it. Engage.
THE EARLY YEARS
When Wallace, who is now nine, was three, I showed him a
video of a combine harvester on youtube. He was fascinated by youtube, and
wanted to spend a lot of time watching it. Around this time he also started watching
movies - prior to then he hadn't been interested in electronic media of any
kind. Something clicked with the combine harvesters, though, and he wanted to
watch videos for hours. My first impulse was to resist it mightily. Watching
films of farm equipment, and then endless Donald Duck and Thomas the Train
shows; wasn't this bad for his development? Shouldn't he be outside, or playing
with his train set, or reading with me, or ANYTHING ELSE BUT WATCHING VIDEOS?
My childhood television and movie viewing and video gaming had been
dictatorially managed by people who knew it was bad for me in any but the
smallest doses. They were right, right?
The problem was that Wallace loved watching things on
the computer, and my efforts to discourage and distract him always created
unhappiness in both of us and disconnection between us. I kept going back to my
peaceful parenting list-serves trying to get someone to make me believe it was
okay, or that I was right to protest it. I was a hopeless case. The parent I wanted
to be, the parent I always want to be, fills her child's field of view with
opportunity and then builds on the ones that catch his interest. So why was I
so resistant to the computer?
I think there were three big reasons.
The first was the relentless propaganda about how bad it is
for kids to spend hours watching tv and computers and playing video games. The
world is changing, childhood is changing, as this type of technology
becomes more sophisticated and pervasive. It makes possible types of connection
and pursuits and passions and professions that were unheard of even fifty years
ago. The old guard sees this and panics - it's addictive! Kids don't do what we
want and expect them to do according to the older social models, and that's bad
and scary! How are they going to grow up to be just like us, since we are so
wonderful, if they do different stuff, especially if it's profoundly
different? So studies are designed which show what the researchers expect them
to show, that kids who use technology in the way that, say, my kids do, are
developing differently and that's BAD!!!
I don't have much of a rejoinder for the research that
purports to show that electronic media is bad for kids' brains. There is other
research that is starting to come out, now that the first wave of people who
were kids when computers and gaming started to be available are old enough to
get research grants, that conflicts with some of the other gloom and doom
reports. It doesn't matter to me, really, because I think this type of research
sounds like an impossible prospect, generally yielding what the researcher
wants it to demonstrate. How do you meaningfully control for confounding
factors in human behavior and brain function and adjust for researcher bias?
You could give me twenty five studies right now that "proved"
conclusively that watching Chip N Dale for days on end at the age of three
leads to terrible or optimal intellectual outcomes, and I wouldn't buy it.
Human behavior is all anecdote, and I have my own experience, plus the
experience of myriad veteran unschoolers, to demonstrate that children who use
computer technology, when they are supported, turn out just fine. When
dealing with human subjects, the answer, as I've seen repeated many times in
unschooling discussions, is "it depends."
And are we so great that what we did as kids, or what are
parents or grandparents did, is the ideal, the altar on which to sacrifice our
own children's agency "for their own good"? Is it possible that they
know something we don't, which is how to live in their world, with the
internet and youtube and portable tablets and more gaming systems? Are we
really doing them a favor by "just not having the stuff available,"
as many parents do, so that they "learn" to live without it? Is that really
setting aside our own egos and embracing the opportunity to clear the path for
them to be themselves, to find all of their possible passions?
Sometimes I fake it before I make it. Sometimes I know
what I want to do but I don't feel it yet. Sometimes I need tricks and
techniques for getting through the moments where parenting with connection and
clearing the way for my children to be passionately, wholly themselves, without
some of the baggage that I have carried around, is difficult. I taught myself
to say "yes" to the computer, pushed myself to facilitate it by
expanding the available options, went through the motions of accepting it
without fully doing so. That was a good first step. Seeking out advice and
intellectual support, the kind of support that is encouragement to do a specific
type of thing rather than whatever I am doing anyway, to do better, was
and is useful in these moments, even if I've been known to resist it at times.
ISSUE 2: INAPPROPRIATE EXPECTATIONS
The second issue that I had is related to the first, and is a
recipe for destroying any relationship, anywhere, at any time - I had
expectations about what my child was supposed to want to do, what our time was
supposed to look like together, what parameters he was supposed to fit within.
But those things weren't him, they were me, my filters, and they did nothing to
further our relationship. They were all about my ego. How could they not be?
The only way my way could be right is if I were better, and wasn't it
part of the basis of my choices as a person, partner and parent that there had
to be a lot of ways in which I could improve, shift, change, to love the world
as it is and not as I wished it to be?
My first step, that of embracing videos or games in practice
if not in spirit, was a good start. It was much better than fighting it, but it
didn't fix the dynamic. I still felt resentful and scared of the possibilities, worried that Wallace wasn't
doing more different activities - more running around, or reading books, or
drawing, or cooking, or anything else that I was still seeing as more
valuable. That was last year, when he was eight:) The reason I'm excited to
talk about this today is that I feel like my breakthrough is very fresh and
recent, and has made such a wonderful change in my life and my relationship
with him. I now have Lysander as well, who is five, and it has helped to see
that his relationship with computers is different - it has helped because it is
easier for me to recognize that Wallace's passion for gaming youtubes, and
online gaming, is very much who he is as opposed to the only outcome
(and a negative one) of being free to choose those activities. Lysander is free
to choose them, and he does, but he chooses other things as well, and has
different interests - computer usage isn't some terrible addictive monster that
sucks kids in and destroys their creativity. There are specific activities that
Wallace chooses to pursue, most of which are accessed through that medium, that
he is passionate about. Another child with access to the same resources chooses
differently.
ISSUE 3: WHAT'S MY ROLE?
The third issue was that I felt excluded. He didn't seem to
need me anymore. My reading to him, or building a train set for him, or kicking
around a soccer ball with him, wasn't as sparkly and fun as the frenetic
intensity of Chip N Dale (that must be too much for his brain, right, as we're
all told, since it's faster than I am?! It reminds me of a Jerry Seinfeld bit
where he argues that the only good drivers on the road are going the same speed
as you are - the slower ones are old biddies and the faster ones are crazy.).
What did that mean for me? What was my role in this new order? I didn't
want to watch Chip N Dale, Chip N Dale must not have any value, he was welcome to go watch Chip N Dale but if he
wanted to be with me he had to turn it off and come do what I wanted to do.
Because being petulant and inflexible is good parenting, right?
The real shift took place when I got to the heart of those
second and third issues: my expectations and my role. Okay, so what I thought
our time was supposed to look like wasn't what it looked like. Easy enough. But
if it just looked like me doing my own thing in another room while he played on
the computer, harboring passive aggressive thoughts about it and waiting for it
to turn into something recognizable to me, that wasn't a good situation. That
wasn't the connected, meaningful relationship I felt sure we could have if I
were doing my job right. What was missing?
I wasn't telegraphing love and support, I was telegraphing
hostility and disapproval. In response, he was retreating.
Only after I figured out my role, did I recognize, in
retrospect, that problem; the problem that judging his choices was creating for
me, for us. My role was, is, to connect with him through what he is
choosing, to see the growth and the value. I learned to sit and watch the
youtubes with him. At first, I found it incredibly grating, but over time, even
with all the swearing and the yelling, I started to see the charm to a lot of
the youtubers he likes. I got to sit with him and hear what was making him
giggle when he watched, instead of hearing the laughs through closed doors. I
watched him follow the thread of suggestions and see what was interesting to
him.
I helped buy the games that he thought looked cool, and
upgrade our computer systems so that he could play. I bought copies of the
games for myself and learned to play. I helped him start a youtube channel. I
watched him navigate the games, use youtube to answer questions; I saw how
quickly he developed proficiency from all the research he had done. I saw how
he learned to read and write from the chats and the comment threads, and helped
him with corrections and composition when he wanted me to. I saw how he used
the computer to relax, or to study, or to work on a challenge. I asked
questions about the gamers, and the games, and now he talks about it with me
constantly when he is not playing. I felt our connection grow when I came to
where he was, instead of insisting that he come to me (which, when he did not
make that choice, just made me feel sad and isolated). Instead of feeling
defensive when family asked me about his choices, I started to find it easy to
talk about all the amazing developments I see, how much fun he has, how he
grows, how cool some of the games are.
He is playing online with people all over the world, of all
ages. His ability to navigate the social world of online gaming is impressive -
how easily he walks away from social static, how quickly he identifies abusive
or anti-social activity and condemns it without becoming emotionally
distressed, how rapidly he makes friends and develops strategies, sometimes
playing in teams and sometimes playing solo. So that brings us to concerns
about the social realm of the internet.
SOCIAL MEDIA
When I was in college I got my first PINE email account. By
the time I graduated there were browser-based email programs. Enterprising
folks set up list-serves and blogs were born. When Wallace was tiny I joined
the Mothering.com forum, which was the beginning of the on-line social
venturing that has brought me here. I have only ever navigated any of it as an
adult. My kids, on the other hand, never knew a world without it. They need
to know how to live in this world, but how could I teach them what they need to
know to be kids in a social media culture? What authority could I possibly
have? No, it is the other way around, it is I who must learn from them.
As parents, we encounter scary stories about social media.
Our lives now have a kind of documentation saturation that
was lacking before smart phones and the world wide web. I've been to a naked
party or two in my time, and I am grateful for the absence of ubiquitous
selfies from the late 90s. What pictures do exist provide enough
reminders, thank you very much. College students had to learn the hard way that
posting drunken photos of yourself on Facebook where a prospective employer
might find them can have consequences. College students don't use Facebook as
much anymore:) But as my parents pointed out to me when my sister had to sit
through a disciplinary committee hearing in high school, "Don't be too
smug. The only difference here is that she got caught and you didn't."
Teens haven't changed, what's changed is that we can see what they are
up to.
For connected families, and connection is a primary objective
in unschooling, this knowledge is already going to be there. Sure, our kids
aren't likely to tell us everything, and would I want to hear it? But
the important things, the questions about which risks are worth taking and
which carry unacceptable stakes, and what the difference is, even, between
something ventured on its own merits versus a rebellion against authority qua
authority; all that I hope to keep open starting now, starting yesterday,
starting the day my son was born, are open because we trust each other.
I don't have teens, but I hope that all the work I've done
over the years to maintain a relationship that is based on honesty and
communication, and on anticipating, not just reacting, will come into play when
I do. At this point, Wallace is on the computer, online, in chats, meeting
people I don't know.
I never liked the concept of "stranger-danger."
People you don't know are just that, people. The key is to learn to read the
situation, to identify what behavior is threatening and what is not, to know
what is safe and what is not. So, you tell your child not to go anywhere with
anyone they don't know without talking to you first. You validate them in their
reactions (no forced hugs!) and encourage them to be honest about how different
situations make them feel. You know you won't be there to make the decisions
for them in critical moments, so you help them develop the tools they will
need.
The same is true online. I pointed out that we don't know
anything about anyone on the internet. I talked about keeping your last name
and immediate location to yourself (Wallace from Maine, for instance, but not
Wallace XYZ from such-and-such town). We got to talk about the different rings
of location - neighborhood, town, state, country, continent, hemisphere,
planet, etc., in the course of these conversations. When he is meeting people
from all over the US and the world, he learns that the world is big, and
varied, without any work on my part. I think our town has 800 permanent
residents. Without the internet, how much smaller his world would be!
But what happens when other people online aren't nice? The
same thing that happens when people aren't nice anywhere else - you learn how
to deal with it. Do you respond or walk away, or both? Have you made an error
in etiquette, have they, or both? You learn from positive examples, and from
seeking advice. In a connected home where electronic media is supported, it is
so easy, because it starts at the time when kids naturally come to parents for
help, and when parents are welcome in kids' worlds (so that, if we are wise and
lucky, perhaps it stays that way. I defer to parents of unschooled teens in
that department, but what I hear is positive).
The other day I walked into the room and heard Wallace say to
an older friend online, "even though I'm young, I'm polite and
friendly." Wallace is nine. That's pretty young. It's especially young
when he is online playing Grand Theft Auto V, a game that the majority of his
age-peers probably aren't even allowed to play. Sometimes other players give
him a hard time, won't play with him, will tell him he sounds like a little
kid. He doesn't mind. If someone doesn't want to play with him, they can play
somewhere else. If someone is being a jerk to him, he walks away. In the
instance above, he was playing with someone who commented on his manners given
his age. He said to me, "I wasn't sure what to say, so I just said he was
right. Even though I'm young, I'm polite and friendly."
When Wallace is online I am around, not necessarily over his
shoulder but in and out, asking what is going on. I ask him, when he is not
online, about his games, and his friends, and his world, and he tells me. He
tells me if someone was being unkind. He tells me how he chooses to act in
certain situations based on the social mores of the online gaming world. If I
hear something that concerns me I ask him about it, maybe make suggestions,
maybe find a way to be more involved in that aspect of his gaming.
FUN AND GAMES, RESEARCH AND INFORMATION
Wallace was seven, I think, when we bought Minecraft for
PC. I had heard about this wonderful
game, Minecraft, that lots of kids were playing, and it sounded to me like
something he might enjoy.
Kids with open, supported access to electronic media treat it
just like any other toy, in my experience. The concept of
"screen-time" as one thing does apply, often, for kids who are
strictly limited with electronics. Any screen will do, because they are all
forbidden. A gaming system, a tablet, a computer game, a video, a show, a
movie; it's all equally exotic. Once kids can interact freely with these media,
they become more discriminating. Sometimes I will hear a parent say, "We
are going to get a movie for the kids," under the assumption that the
entity "movie" is sufficient to occupy a troop of individuals who
haven't reached puberty, and I think, "well, that might be fun. Or
not." My kids are much better than I am at walking away from a movie they
don't enjoy - if it's not fun, why do it? There is nothing inherently
entertaining about watching a movie, what matters is what the movie is.
I bought him a Nintendo dsi because I thought he would like
it, but he lost interest fairly quickly. I think he was most into watching
Phineas and Ferb on Netflix at that time. So I started to watch Phineas and
Ferb with him. Instead of being in the other room all the time, doing my own
thing, stopping in occasionally to make clear that I was available for playing
but not actually connecting with him at all because all my visits
communicated was "this activity isn't worthwhile but if you want to do
something I like, I'm around," I started to try to connect. If he
wanted to watch a show, I watched a show with him. If he wanted to watch a
video, I watched a video. I couldn't do it all the time, I have a child
who is younger by four years and has different interests. That wasn't the
issue, the issue was whether I wanted to play with him, considered what
he was doing to be play, and worthwhile. The more I went through the motions of
treating it that way, even as I was still learning to feel that, the
easier our relationship became.
I can't quite remember the progression of the gaming youtube
interest, but at some point we started watching Minecraft videos. You probably
all know Stampy Longhead. "Great!" I thought, "Here's a video about
something, now we go get the something." I couldn't understand,
didn't want to understand, the value in the videos themselves. When I talk to
other parents about the internet, this specific issue comes up regularly. Sure,
we all get that the computer is a tool. I know I didn't surprise any of you
with that insight. What it seems harder for some of us to get is that it is a toy,
as wonderful a toy as Legos or Play-dough or Parcheesi. Just playing with it,
for its own sake, is fun.
I play the banjo. I watch a lot of videos of people playing
banjos. I go to concerts where people play banjos. I don't watch the videos or
go to the concerts because I play the banjo; I just like banjos. I watch
videos and go to concerts because it is fun. I watch Jerry Seinfeld
videos because it is fun, not because I want to be a comic. Someone who
doesn't like banjo, or doesn't like Jerry Seinfeld, might not see the value in
those videos. I know there are plenty of things that I like to do that my kids
think are boring. Does that mean those activities don't have value to me? Do
they have the authority to assign value to some of my choices, but not others?
Of course not, and that goes both directions - who am I to say that Garfield
and Friends or VanOss Gaming doesn't have value? It has value to them.
We did buy Minecraft, though, and he did enjoy
playing it, but Wallace is a pretty social guy. Although I suspect this is
common knowledge at this point, the old stereotype of gamers as anti-social and
painfully introverted, Comic Book Store Guys (for those Simpsons fans out
there) hiding in basements turning ghostly pale does not describe today's
gamers (if, indeed, it was ever an accurate description. I remember reading an
interview in which David Rawlings, a virtuoso guitarist who didn't even pick up
the instrument until he was fifteen, said that he couldn't think of anything to
attribute his skill to except maybe playing a lot of video games when he was a
kid.) As a friend who worked for Rock Star Games pointed out to me, if your
game doesn't have a robust on-line presence and social component, it doesn't
have a future.
There are a lot of people, certainly, who prefer to play by
themselves, but Wallace learned from his youtubes that many players use servers
to interact with other people, and that was more appealing to him than playing
alone. There are two main ways to interact on servers - one is via the chat and
the other is through a video service such as Skype. In order to have friends to
Skype with, though, you usually have to meet in some other way first.
Proficiency in chat seems pretty important, or at least it did to him.
He couldn't really read or write when he started playing in
the Unschooling group server I found through Facebook. I sat with him and tried
to help, but he was frustrated by the pace of the chat compared to what he
could do. So he learned to read and type. There was never a time where he sat
down at the kitchen table to accomplish this, he just immersed himself in the
world of youtube and learned to read the comments and chats based on what was
happening in the audio and video. While all my early efforts at forcing reading
instruction were miserable failures, through his own volition he developed
fast, accurate skills by using the medium he preferred.
I help him. He asks questions and I answer them, and I sit
with him and make corrections if he is open to that. He reads text and graphic
novels proficiently, and exchanges emails and texts with friends and family. Using
language, instead of repeating it, for him, has its roots almost entirely in
his online immersion. Bill Watterson, of Calvin and Hobbes fame, has also made
significant contributions. Electronic media is an incredibly effective learning
tool, not because of the myriad applications that are intended for teaching,
although many kids enjoy those and I know there were lots of self-styled
"educational" shows that Wallace enjoyed in his viewing rotation, but
because it is so easy to navigate at whatever level you are at. Lysander, who
is five, can play happily with a tablet or computer, Wallace, at nine, can,
too. Sarah, 38, and John, 37, also enjoy these toys and tools. The reading and
writing that a person needs to use the computer effectively grows as interests
grow and morph - it's seamless. Just amazing. Imagine a book that was just a
little more sophisticated every time you opened it up? That you could start
using in early childhood and still enjoy as an adult. They exist (Calvin and
Hobbes being a wonderful example), but media with audio and visual, and now
increasingly tactile, interface, is infinitely flexible.
VIOLENCE AND PROFANITY
So back to Stampy. Stampy is fun, and family-friendly, but it
didn't take long for Wallace to want to find more, and that was when I had to
revisit my comfort again. In my experience, almost all the popular
youtubers swear and shout, and watching my kids watch them, I conclude that the
swearing and the shouting and the great animation of the youtubers are most of
the point. My first reaction to all of this was to condemn it and withdraw from
it. How could listening to Jack Septiceye shriek obscenities (even in that
charming accent...) possibly have value? Of course, it does, and the big shift
came for me when I learned to love him. I sat with Wallace and watched the
videos. When the language got very blue I took the opportunity to talk about polite
and impolite language, and the appropriate use of both. I explained what the
words meant. When Wallace repeated something out of context, I never made a big
deal out of it, I just talked about other people's comfort and expectations.
The videos made it easier to have these conversations because the topics
came up naturally.
There is a lot of content in these videos, too. And given
what youtubers rake in annually, some of whose entire catalog is just opening
boxed toys and playing with them, I certainly can't make any claims about what constitutes
"wasting" time. These folks have figured out how to support
themselves financially, quite young in many cases, simply immersing themselves
utterly in their passions. Isn't that amazing, and wonderful, and what many of
us want, in part, for ourselves and our children?
But on to the content. While I was becoming increasingly
charmed by Jack Septiceye (whose real name is Sean Something and who answers
any and all viewer questions, no matter how personal, with unaffected aplomb),
Wallace was playing and learning. He was learning about other games,
learning strategy, learning to read, learning the social mores of the online
world. At nine, he smokes me in any game. He knows how they work. His guesses
are educated.
I am not a gamer, but I am learning. I started a youtube
channel, because he started a youtube channel. I only have a couple of videos
because having a channel is a lot of work! That was the first thing I learned.
Having a channel is a full-time job, if you are going to post regularly, and
since I already have a full time job with my kids, I have only posted a few
times.
When I started playing I was scared all the time. I played
extremely cautiously, as if these were real-life challenges. I died at really
frustrating times, losing all my resources and having to start again after
hours of play. I got angry and quit, or started new worlds. But slowly, slowly,
I started to understand that resources in Minecraft are infinite. It's not
real life, and that's the point. You can die over and over again, and you just
start again. These are safe risks, but you learn real lessons about
gathering and using resources, protecting yourself from threats, collaborating
with other people. You make mistakes and play again having learned from those
mistakes. The life lessons from gaming go on and on.
You know that. It's okay with Minecraft. But what happens
when your nine year old wants to play Grand Theft Auto V? That's different,
right? Well, in my experience, no. Jack Septiceye loves GTAV. NerdCubed, my
favorite, with his lovely accent and general mannerisms, who has gaming videos
with MomCubed and DadCubed as well, plays GTAV. Everyone plays GTAV. The
game is a phenomenon.
It's easy to see why. The graphics and the gameplay are
amazingly realistic. It is gorgeous to watch. The mechanics and physics of the
game, as I understand from gamers, are accurate enough to make it feel true
while forgiving enough to make the gameplay fantastic in the true sense of the
word (cars and bikes can do things they shouldn't be able to do, but you
can still crash if you get it really wrong, for instance.) You can play
in first or third person, using key commands or controllers. I could go on and
on about what my son loves about the game.
What about the violence, though? What about the prostitutes,
and the drug dealers, and the biker gangs? This is not a first person shooter
game, actually, although some people think that it is. The new PC version has a
first person option, but that is very recent in the game's history. It is,
however, extremely violent. No doubt about it. As Wallace says, "These
people have horrible lives. They are no one anyone would want to be." The
characters are either genuinely amoral or highly criminal or both. Their
personal lives are a misery. These are not figures to emulate. My 9yo
doesn't have any desire to be like these people or do what they do in real
life. That's the point. It's a fantasy. It's a place to experiment with
being a bad guy, a really bad guy, in which no one gets hurt. It is fiction,
and like any well-wrought fiction, when you are immersed in it you connect with
it, and that connection lasts for a little while after you leave it. I remember
walking out of a movie theater in Budapest in the middle of the day, having
just watched The Matrix for the second or third time, and expecting to find a
cell phone in the trash can.
I didn't. Laurence Fishburne is real, but Morpheus isn't.
He's a character on a movie screen. Likewise, when my son goes to bed at night,
when he wakes up in the morning, when he plays with friends or goes to the
grocery store, no one is stealing cars and murdering prostitutes. The world
that he lives in is filled with people treating each other respectfully,
honestly, carefully. He has a loving home and lives with a level of security
that is astounding in the context of human history. He knows the difference. I
don't live with anyone else's circumstances, so I can't speak to the effect a
different environment might have, but I can speak to my own, and I see a
thoughtful, gentle and generous human who has no trouble distinguishing between
a two-dimensional dystopia constructed of pixels and the three-dimensional
surroundings of his world.
All that is not to say that there aren't real lessons that he
takes away from these games. He learns to persevere, to pick himself up and try
again when he fails, because he is failing in a way that is both real and
safe. Failing safely is so important to growth. Aside from the game mechanics,
though, there are many social themes that arise in video games.
Wallace was watching a youtube of Jack Septiceye playing
GTAV, and there was a scene during which he was consorting with a prostitute. I
looked over his shoulder and said, "You can have sex in this game?"
He laughed and said, "yeah," although he also mentioned in another
conversation that he always "declines their services," in quotation
marks:) He's nine, and not particularly interested. What struck me, though, was
the comfort he felt around the subject of sex in the media, around me. When I
was nine I would have recoiled in horror at that interaction with my parents.
In fact, it was exactly the same scenario, a video game sequence involving
prostitutes, that was why I was forbidden to play Leisure Suit Larry.
The dynamic I have with my son feels so much healthier to me
than one in which certain aspects of sex and culture are forbidden. The
"education" that teenagers get from their peers about sex and drugs
and rock and roll, where nothing is taboo, is part of the fabric of the
internet and gaming world that he encounters, and that I get to participate in.
These discussions are seamless, flowing easily from what he was comfortable
knowing at four, to what he wants to know now, to what he may want or need to
know later. Sometimes he talks about attitudes about race or gender that come
up in discussions about games. There are no awkward "talks" where I
force a lesson (the best way to communicate with anyone probably not being
to lecture them out of the blue). Things just come up, and I listen, and
respond. It's so simple.
He spends A LOT of time on the computer and on his tablet. He
doesn't need my encouragement to do that, just my support. There are other
things he likes to do, too, though, and the computer is so intense and sparkly
that he is completely immersed in it and forget to do other things. He asks me
to remind him to do different stuff, and I stay ahead of his requests as much
as possible in terms of making sure that he has books he likes and social
engagements with friends and trips to the swimming hole and whatever else I
know he enjoys. If he doesn't want to do anything else, however, that's
fine. It's not my role to tell him which activities are more or less worthy of
his time, or to insist that he check off a certain number of boxes of different
tasks. I am fortunate to be able to provide the resources he needs to pursue
his passion. Why would I take it away from him, or limit it? When I see what he
learns, how he grows, how happy he is, I know that unschooling is working. I
know that he is learning to live fully in his interests, and gaining the
confidence in himself and his support network to find ways to pursue his dreams
at every stage of his life.
