Dancing with the Devil

All summer long, I have been dancing a tango with the Devil: video games.

Let's get one thing clear: I am *not* one of those anti-screen mamas. I understand that position and I can't say I blame anyone who eschews the television, but seriously, how do you live knowing that Friday Night Lights exists and you haven't seen it? How do you hold up a conversation about children swallowing objects and NOT reference the House episode where the child with autism swallowed the dirt from his sand table? And how, for the love of all that is good and holy, do you live without Jon Stewart?!

I grew up in a household with 22 television sets. You read that correctly. Twenty-two. Yes, my parents had a big house. Yes, they were in every room, every bathroom, the laundry room, the kitchen. I had cable TV in my bedroom before I could read. I watched Hill Street Blues and St. Elsewhere before I grew breast buds or knew how to write in cursive. I think I turned out relatively okay. Do I want 22 television sets in MY house? No, not really. The three we have will suffice (and one of those broke today). The two Tivos we own are invaluable, however, and Husband and I will die declaring Tivo better than maybe the invention of fire. I don't stress about my children watching TV. Television and I get along just fine.

But. But video games and I? We do not see eye to eye. When Firstborn was about three, he was introduced to video games at my gym childcare. They installed video games to the older toddler room because -- get this -- parents demanded it. Gotta love parents. Always thinking of the bigger picture. Very soon, Firstborn became absolutely, positively addicted to video games. When I arrived to collect him and C. at the gym childcare, he would dissolve into a full-blown raging tantrum, emphasis on the rage part. He punched me, roundhouse-kicked me, threw himself on the floor, clawed at my face. His eyes were glazed. He was practically foaming at the mouth.

It was, frankly, terrifying.

I'm not saying that video games are harmful or bad for every child. My own middle son fares much better with them. He is a bit addicted right now, but nothing like the way Firstborn always has been. For instance, C. can actually put down a DSi or a Wii controller and walk away. He'll find something else to do -- play with his action figures, perhaps, or start drawing. He uses the stories of the video games as jumping off points for imaginative play.

Firstborn has never been as likely to engage in imaginative play, though. He is the kind of child who really yearns for and seems to need external stimulation, and video games feed something in him that scares me. He has stood playing video games for hours before, refusing to potty, almost refusing to blink. He literally walks away with dry, bloodshot eyes from not blinking. And the games change who he is. After he plays, he is aggressive, short-tempered, mean. He is a different child after he plays video games.

I avoided having a game console in my house for a long time. I finally let Firstborn have one, mostly because I hoped to use it as a disciplinary tool at a time when his behavior was at a desperate point and I needed to have something with high value to hold over his head (yeah, no, it didn't work). Once the seal was broken, it was another year before we bought a Wii and another year before we bought the children DSi machines.

We intended for the DSis to be primarily or exclusively for trips, but since Firstborn began the summer with a head injury, they sort of weaseled their way into our summer routine. I didn't allow them to take them to the beach, and so for the month of July, we were largely video game free. It was nice. But I have to be honest and say that when the children have access to the DSis,it is kind of remarkable how quiet they are, how still, and how little they bicker, yell, or mess up the house. What a dangerous, dangerous temptation for a mother of three boys. I mean, we sat in a plane on a runway for two hours in May, and then another two hours in the sky, and we never heard a peep out of our older boys at all. THAT is a miracle, people!

I feel like someone who has been flirting with drugs all summer, hanging out at the parties and catching whiffs of the smoke, gazing at the partygoers who seem to be having so much more fun than me, and I am getting ready to turn around and walk out the door to head to the nearest Glee Club meeting. I know it is the right thing to do, that the DSis need to leave before school resumes, that my children will never read as much if they are around. I hate the way video games make my children act like pigs at the trough. I hate the way I feel like I am watching my own children lose all self control when they have those screens shining light on their faces.

It's so hard, trying to walk a tightrope with elementary-school aged children. Video games are part of popular culture for little boys in particular. They are part of the stories they tell. They are to them what Cabbage Patch Kids and Barbies were for me. They reference Mario and Luigi in conversations. Firstborn's classmates call him and talk to him while they hook up virtually on Webkinz and at Club Penguin. I don't think I can eliminate video games from their lives, but at the same time, I feel my children cannot limit the role video games play in their brains by themselves. Firstborn has told me point-blank that "his brain can't stop thinking about them." It's incredible. And mortifying.

I have been trying to give them fair warning, to drop hints that the video game orgy that has been parts of this summer will soon be drawing to an end. Our usual school year rule is no video games on weekdays, and on weekends we try to have enough activities that the kids don't notice how little they have time to play them. A better parent might have held firmer and not allowed them into her house. I just wish that in What to Expect When You're Expecting there had been a chapter on learning to deal with the constant tension and negotiation of activities your children will desperately want to engage in that you find morally compromising. I have a feeling that would have helped more than telling me about possible hemorrhoids or cankles.