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[Ashe]

4 kids, 1 DS...you do the math


Ninten-Don't... How I watched my children turn into monsters the minute I bought them a computer game
By ROSIE MILLARD - More by this author » Last updated at 00:07am on 1st May 2008

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As my eight-year-old son Gabriel hit his five-year-old sister Honey on the head, ten-year-old Phoebe started yelling and the youngest, three-year- old Lucien, joined in the fun, a red mist descended over my vision.

It was eight in the morning. No one had eaten breakfast. The curtains had not been opened. The beds had not been made. The dog had not been walked. Our habitual regime of a ten-minute morning music practice had been abandoned.

The entire mood was one of anger, confrontation, pain and frustration.

Welcome to a family of Nintendo-users. Or should I say user, since we had only one of these infernal devices.

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Rosie Millard

I finally buckled to buy a Nintendo DS Lite after considerable and sustained pressure from my children.

What finally did it was a suggestion from my oldest child that without a Nintendo in her school bag, she would be unable to fit in at school. (Yes, I know - oldest trick in the book. And I fell for it.)

It was that, plus reading a piece in one newspaper which suggested that if you regularly played Brain Trainer on your Nintendo, you'd bump up your mental acuity.

And another piece from child expert Dr Tanya Byron, of all people, which, as far as I recall, actually suggested that regular use of interactive toys such as the DS helped your children to be caring and creative.

I also had a sneaking and totally selfish wish to be Mother of the Year. Which I was, for about a day.

When the pale blue, £150 Nintendo finally arrived last November, fresh from Hong Kong (I had bought it on the net), crammed with a 'bundle' of 20 games including Brain Trainer, Fifa 08, and Nintendogs, my children hugged me tightly.

"Thank you, thank you, Mummy," they chorused. "We LOVE you!"

Mission accomplished, I smiled indulgently at them.

Then we were off, down a slope which became comprehensively more slippery the longer my family and the Nintendo existed under the same roof.

At first, I decreed that the device would be a "family Nintendo", passed around lovingly by everyone as we all played Brain Trainer together.

That idea lasted about a week. I found Brain Trainer utterly predictable and the children found it totally boring.

Gradually, each child found his or her own Nintendo 'fix'.

Gabriel became obsessed with playing the football game Fifa 08: over meals, on the loo, in bed at midnight.

Phoebe just took virtual dogs for walks, while Honey zoned in on the My Little Pony game.

The 'toy' caused endless rows, sessions of screaming and increasingly regular parental punishments.

It was removed and placed in my desk. The children found it and hid it in their bedroom. I put it into my bag.

They discovered it again. I devised a daily Nintendo rota.

Then we lost the charger. What a great week that was. The musical instruments were resumed, the real dog was walked, the argument quotient in the house calmed down.

Then we found the charger again. The children wept with joy. "You'd better behave with it this time," I warned. "Otherwise..."

"Yeah, yeah," they shouted, skipping off happily. How long did that last? How long do you think - 20 minutes, tops.

I'll admit, the Nintendo had its uses. I managed to achieve a longheld aim of getting a short haircut for Phoebe via the simple tactic of allowing her to take the Nintendo to the hairdresser's.

She was so engrossed that she failed to notice the flashing blades and ended up with a wonderfully short crop.

Having a Nintendo to hand is also jolly useful when you are on a train with a child and want to read a book, write a letter or call the office.

Hand over the Nintendo and without any effort, you have a window of about two hours of peace, with your child doing something quietly constructive.

Except, it's not. What is constructive about playing football on a tiny screen, or washing a virtual dog, or watching a hideous pink pony trot around a pink palace decorated with shells?

Fighting to get onto the machine was bad enough, but it was worse when they were forcibly dragged from it.

Our Nintendo had taken the guise of a small but toxic drug which, little by little, was poisoning my children.

When they had had their fix, they were even more frustrated and discontented than before.

Interestingly, Dr Susan Greenfield, writing last weekend in the press, seems to suggest the same thing.

A specialist in brain degeneration, Dr Greenfield has a new book out which predicts that young people are headed for a mass loss of personal identity, thanks to the amount of time they spend in the interactive realms of things like Nintendo.

"The time is well nigh," she said, "to explore the impact of these technologies."

Well, I don't want to explore the impact any more. I know what the impact is on my children.

I have first-hand evidence that using a Nintendo turns my delightful, curious and funny children into argumentative demons full of aggression, wholly uninterested in anything apart from playing, and then playing some more.

At the same time that all the children started crying and yelling before breakfast, I spotted Phoebe's cello and I realised that she had not got it out of its case all week.

Yet she had notched up probably around eight hours on the Nintendo. There and then, I made my mind up. The Nintendo had to go, and to hell with my children 'fitting in'.

But how to get rid of it? I mused on the idea of giving it to my sister, a mother-of-five, but rejected that on the grounds of child cruelty.

I considered selling it on eBay, but rejected that on the grounds that I didn't want to waste any more of my energy on the hideous thing.

In the end, last week, I walked into my local branch of Cancer Research UK and gave it away.

"Would you like this Nintendo?" I said. "In perfect condition, with a bundle of 20 games. Plus charger."

The lady behind the counter smiled broadly. "What a fantastic gift," she said.

I returned to stunned disbelief from the children - "You did what?" - and floods of real tears.

Since then, however, our domestic life has been transformed.

The children have swung back into their old habits of reading, playing the violin, walking the dog, occasionally fighting, cooking and making things.

Do they mourn for the lost screen-based world of the Nintendo? Actually, I think they've forgotten all about it.

[The One]

you just dont give kids that play violin Nintendo DS's.

its that simple.

[Azuros]

This is just another shining example of the mindset that is plaguing the united states.

A short list of problems.

The crime rates are awful.
The legal system is in shambles.
The economy is going to hell because of a war that will not end well in the forseeable future.
And to top it all off, the words dignity, honor, and responsibility seem to have completely lost their meaning to american culture.
Change is required urgently or america is quickly going to hell, and the rest of the world will follow soon after.

[Ashe]

that's actually a mother in the UK

[Azuros]

oh...
Still this shit is rediculous.

[Funky Cold Adina]

Give your kid a game system, that isn't the problem. The problem is that you allowed to stop your family from doing other activities. Get some control over your kids. Just because they have the game doesn't mean they should be able to play it when they usually were practicing their instruments or doing family chores.

The system isn't evil, you are just dumb.

[hungarianhorntail]

no shit dude.
don't let your kids run the house, YOU'RE the mother. YOU take away the privileges.

[Sandy is my wizard]

My parents failed at parenting because they let me play video games.


Pretty rockstar back in the 90's with games like Persian Gulf Inferno.

[MagicOPromotion]

If video games and YouTube and the internet cause violence, then its not the technology at fault, its the parents inability to stop their children from using it. Because its obvious that it doesnt cause it in all of us, or even most of us, or even 1 of us.
_______
=== XRumer 5.0 Palladium RULEZ! ===

[Sandy is my wizard]

I'm pretty sure that in the distant future Harrison Ford will be employed to seek and destroy bots such as yourself

[Red]

Lame. My nephew has a DS and he's got so many rules with it. He has to do chores, homework, reading, etc first. Amd at home he isn't allowed to play the 360 on school nights. It's all about discipline and control. This lady thinks just cause her kids did all that other shit all perfectly everything else should go perfectly. Wouldn't it be the same if all three kids love playing the violin and you only bought one? gosh.

[sassmore4u]

giving three kids a nintendo ds is like throwing a piece of raw meat into a lions den... just an ugly, ugly mess

it's making me nostalgic over the days i've had to fight my siblings over the remote

[Pledodge]

I never particularly liked the DS. I like my graphics high quality, and even if some of the games are okay, most of them look like a seventh grader did them in one class of computer animation. I like my Wii, because it's almost like I'm really decapitating green people with a sword... But I'm not, and that sucks.

But yeah, if she doesn't start controlling her house now, it's going to be hell in the future. My mother (Oh no kids, it's another Danielle -A.K.A Pledodge- life story! Run, hide, turn of your screen! This is going to be really boring, but as I have nothing to do... Sorry, milkblood. I know you hate this!) used to be kind of strict with me and my sister, but then I found the most amazing and useful weapon against parents... the Guilt Trip. My sister went with the more grunt like approach and started sucking up, then when she discovered she wanted to be cool, she switched to hissy fits, tantys, fake tears, and the like. We kinda clash.
It was difficult enough with two girls, how the heck is one woman going to handle that?
Good luck.

[Orangejuice]

It would be fun to watch mind.
Throwing a solitary handheld into a ring of deprived children.
I may have hit upon an idea...

[LusciousWebb]

when and if i have kids, i probably will not allow video games what so ever

[random]

Thats cold.

[Zach]

My parents only allowed educational games. Wasn't so bad.

[sassmore4u]

the only video game console my parents ever bought was the sega genesis (well until the wii came out)

still pretty awesome

[random]

never played on the sega genesis. I don't remember any games for it.

Also. What qualifies as an educational game?

[sassmore4u]

all time favorite sega genesis game: sonic

that was the bomby diggity yo