Video Games Suck!!!

It kills me. I teach these kids whose parents let them play violent video games for hours on end every night when they need to be reading to them, talking with them and playing with them. They want these boys to be normal and productive members of society and they stick them in front of the TV set with games like Halo and Doom and guns and guns and guns…. Then they send them to me for 6 or so hours a day and get frustrated when we can’t work friggin miracles and make them care about school or learning.

I really have an intense hatred for video games now especially that I have my own kids. My own son, the first thing he asks me about when I get home is, “Can we play LEGO Star Wars??” Granted, it is a cool game, but he is more interested in that than he is me or anyone else in the house. That just seems kind of ominous to me but maybe I am an over-reacting old fart now.

I sat with one of the kids I teach who shall remain nameless and we figured out that he does (on the average) 18 hours of video gaming per week! That just freaks me out. I think that all kids on the Autism spectrum should be video game free and I will urge my co-workers to make that a huge part of our contract with our parents next year. It seems like pissing in the wind to work with a kid who spends all that time stimming himself in front of a cathode ray tube.

I’m one to talk though. Many nights will find me lying in bed in another room from the rest of my family watching The Big Lebowski for the 50th time or so. I guess that’s no different from some kid playing Grand Theft Auto over and over with the infinite life cheat code. Jeff Bridges is a hell of a lot more funny, though, and there are some interesting metaphysics and theology somewhere in The Big Lebowski, I think. (That’s for another BLOG though, cause I am tired now from all the cooking, yelling and other reasonable activity I got to take part in today).

peace