Dad: The Video Game

More than his addiction to the immediate gratification these gadgets provide, what really bothers me is that my son has mastered all of them quicker than I can change the clock on my car radio.

FamilyMan^TM
By Gregory Keer

I'm worried that I'll soon lose favor with my sons unless I morph into a video game that registers points - in bright colors and sound effects - each time my children do something great. I feel destined for the scrap heap because I lack the talent to triple jump over vast deadly chasms to annihilate quirky monsters that get in my kids' way.

It doesn't matter that I do those things in real-world terms, between praising them for their accomplishments and protecting them from the world's dangers. What counts against me is that my kids can't make me do anything with the nimble punch of a button on a video-game controller.

 I'm having a hard time with all of this technology and I'm feeling really old saying it. Sure, I'm a member of the generation that first played Pong and Intellivision way past our bedtimes, but I'm also well connected with my PC, progressive-scan DVD, satellite feed, and digital video recorder (DVR). Yet, my wired-ness (or is it weirdness?) pales in comparison to the way my oldest son is plugged in.

Following the experts' advice, we monitored our 9-year-old's electronic diet from birth. Benjamin rarely watched TV until he was 2, then got 30 minutes of daily screen time (with more on days when my wife and I passed out on the couch) until he was in first grade. That's when peer influence kicked in and he came home from playdates naming anime cartoons and video-game characters about which we were oblivious. Because Benjamin's behavior and worldview still seemed age appropriate, we eased the TV restrictions, as long as we sampled the shows with him.

Then, in Benjamin's second-grade year, another child's father explained that he bought his kid a PlayStation to keep him on the social curve of the rest of his friends. So, that holiday season, we purchased a GameCube system, because it was the least expensive and had the most E-rated games. Needless to say, Benjamin thought we were the best parents in the world. We weren't so sure then, and we're not so sure now.