A nightly ritual in my home involves me sitting comfortably on the couch with a cup of coffee in one hand and my tablet in the other. As I read the latest news or play a few games with friends, I hear the delightful sounds of my son playing a first-person shooter with his dad. At 8 years old, some parents think my son is too young for violent video games, but I believe otherwise and my son’s grades and actions prove I’m right.
Not all children mature at the same rate. Children mature at different rates and speeds. Some kids are more mature than many adults by six or seven years old and others don’t mature until after they graduate high school. Being a parent involves helping a child mature at a comfortable rate for that child. In my home, maturing happens early in life at a self-guided pace. I never weaned my children off the bottle. I never potty-trained and I never limited the foods they could eat or when they could eat them. Some may call this lenient or liberal parenting, but I call it supportive parenting. Along those same lines I feel my children have the right to choose what types of video games they want to play and my son chooses first-person shooters and other violent games.
Children who play violent video games become violent adults and other crap parenting talk. Many parenting experts suggest violent video games have a detrimental effect on children. Some of the claimed negative effects include taking out anxiety on peers and other children, use of aggressive language and being less caring with peers. Evidently these parenting experts have not met my son. He is caring, honest and completely supportive of friends and peers. He doesn’t react violently to situations in life because he knows what’s on the screen is just a game, not reality.
Violent video games may make children smarter. In the 2nd grade my son reads on a 4th to 5th grade level and gets straight As. As a matter of fact, all my children get straight As and they all play violent, first-person shooters. Video games actually improve dexterity and computer literacy, but what about the violence? The violence shown in video games will not have an impact on a child’s behavior if time spent playing the game is limited. My son plays less than one hour per day, which averages out to about seven hours a week. Limiting the time children spend in front of the computer, video games or television has a positive impact, especially when the remaining free time is spent drawing, coloring, reading and building with blocks.
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