A little bit about the way I game

I'm sure its going to come, so I'm gonna get it out now. No, I do not throw my kids in a room, put on cartoons, and then lock myself away to play video games. One of two things happens if you do that. A) your wife kills you, or B) you'd be a bad parent. I play my games at night, usually when the kids have gone to bed. UNLESS, in the case of the older boys, they have done all their chores and have been good to each other most of the day (asking for all day is like asking mountains to move...not gonna happen.)

Playing games with the kids isn't just to vent my frustrations of the day out on pounding some virtual character into the ground. This allows me to sit down with my kids, they're minds aren't running a thousand miles a minute, and they can tell me about their day. We mabye sit there for 30 minutes at the most playing a game together, and in that time I learn what they did the day before, how school had been, what they were learning, and what they had for lunch. Try asking that while they are running around the house, and you'd be lucky to even get three words out of them, let alone three sentences! So what I'm saying is don't lock your children up so you can play, but mabye let them join you (taking in the fact that you should find appropriate games, or at least teach them the right and wrongs of life before say mortal kombat is played) and have a good time with your kids, and learn about what they've been up to.

In the Beginning...there was Mortal Kombat!

Trying to find a jumping off point was a little hard at first, but after some time I finally figured out a good place to give you an idea of what my life is like with the kids. about 4 years ago, when I had just moved in with Amanda and the two boys, she went out to pick up some groceries for everyone. Perfect time to teach the kids some good hand-eye coordination with a little friend of mine called Mortal Kombat! Needless to say the kids enjoyed playing the game, but we're made to fully understand that in no way shape or form could you do any of these things in real life. My motto was "If they're going to play, they need to know reality." and reality is, you cannot punch someone in the face so hard that it comes off. Now I'm not an advocate for people blaming anger on games, but Amanda clearly didn't think it was a good idea at the time, because as soon as she came home she saw Hunter's (my now 8 year old son) character being upper-cutted into the pit. Now if any of you are a big fan of MK, or even remotely heard of it, you know what happens after that...big fall, big spike...amazing death. Hunter turned to his mother after that, and looked at her open mouthed stare, and simply said "its ok mommy, its not real...you can't uppercut someone that hard!" Ah...a boy after my own heart. Let this be a lesson, you can teach your kids the difference between acceptable and unacceptable, real and fake, enjoying a good game, or letting it make you angry and want to beat people up. All it takes is guidance, something that alot of these parents now-a-days don't understand. Now I know alot of people will say "but wait Sean, aren't you one of these now-a-day parents?" Correct, I am a parent in the here and now, but I was also raised right, with a sense of morality. I don't let the video games babysit my kids, I let them get out a little bit of the stress from school and everday life (especially with daddy being in EMS!) by playing a few games, even if a few of them are a little more graphic than the average kid friendly one. The main difference between me, and father game hater is that I teach my kids that this is fake, and anything like this in the real world is and always will be extremely punished! Enough ranting, work in the morning, and I still have two more chapters of MK to unlock for the boys. Good night fellow parents and gamers!

An introduction

Test 3...2....1....begin! A little bit of information to start off with. #1) I am 23 years old, and the proud parent of 4 boys. 8, 6, and twin 2 year olds. So that means that of course our house is littered with Transformers, Superheroes, and video games. #2) I am an avid gamer since the day I could pick up a controller, this has been passed on to my kids as well. #3) I'm not exactly the type to ban my kids from playing certain games, so as you'll soon learn, I'm going to be writing my experiences down from this, from the first time my wife caught us playing mortal kombat, to buying Dead Rising with my 6 year old in tow. What I'd like you to come out of this blog with is a little understanding, that not all parents are crazy. That they DO care what their kids watch, read, and play. And that you don't always have to ban them from something, but mabye teach them about it instead.