Why do so many people complain about electronics and video games yet they continue to let their children use them so often? Our oldest son Liam (age 11) has voiced his great concern several times over the last couple of weeks that people are excluding him because he doesn’t have a phone to get texts on and no one will call him, that he doesn’t have Instagram so he’s missing out and the latest is to get Fortnite and Xbox live so he can play with his friends and know what they are talking about.
I constantly hear people complain about this, post about it and share articles. Yet, here we are fighting the fight against electronics and somehow creating a kid who is excluded from things because of his lack of electronics.
We have a home phone for our kids to get phone calls and make phone calls to their friends (and of course my mother!) It’s getting harder and harder for him to get a hold of his friends because there are no home phones and lots of time parents are out and about. He only has a few cell numbers and most of the time no one answers.
What are we doing to our kids? Why are we creating kids who only communicate via text? Who would rather stay home and play a video game against someone else in another house than hang out together? And adding the stress of Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat and a whole host of other social media things I know nothing about to our 11, 12, 13 year olds who can’t handle the emotions they have before those things!
We are in no way saying we are amazing parents but this is one fight we are trying to stay on course. Our kids have an Xbox (not live, yet), they share one old phone (mostly for music and sometimes games, they share one tablet that barely has room for anything but can play some games and they watch TV. However, they do not have their own tablets, cell phones, Fortnite or unlimited access to any of it.
He’s in grade 6, we plan to stick with this fight for as long as we can but it’s going to get harder and harder if he keeps getting excluded.
This is exhausting!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
