Kelly Rose Bradford: Zombified computer game wotsits

Jan 9 2009

Kelly Rose Bradford

How smug I was a few months back when I reported my horror at seeing young children in a restaurant transfixed – nay – totally zombified – by their hand held computer game wotsits.

How I mocked their no-good guardians and condemned their parenting skills, bemoaned their lack of table manners (not only elbows on the table but electronic gadgetry too) and generally berated any adult who indulges their child in such technological wickedness.

But times change, and now, mere months later, I too am sitting at that table and I confess I am shovelling in humble pie. Troughfuls of it.

Boy recently got his much coveted Nintendo DS Lite and for the past three weeks it has been attached to his being as though it was part of his physical make up: grafted to his palms and supported by his thumbs. It is now part of him.

Nothing else in life appears to matter; the previously loved Thomas train set, his bike, even the cat has been superseded by this little box of tricks.

Several times he has tried to initiate ancient old Mummy in the art of the games console. With limited success. I have neither the inclination, the patience or the eyesight for such things, and, I admit, I'm also a bit rubbish and don't really ‘understand’ the point of chasing little things around a tiny screen and frantically hitting buttons in order to ‘win’.

And nor of course do I fully approve; I don't want him to be the child in the restaurant wired up to various gadetry as though it were a life support system. I want to be strong enough to say "No, go and play with a hoop and a stick if you're bored."

But of course I can't because all his friends have them too and the perpetual phrase that every generation has strung out since the year dot: ‘But everyone else has one!’ finally wore us down.

Which makes me wonder just how I will cope with him as a teenager; if I am this much of a pushover while he is five, no doubt by 10 he will have an armful tattoos, be smoking a pipe and addicted to slot machines.

To be fair, a lot of the games do have some kind of education element, and his reading skills are coming along in leaps and bounds – even if ‘Mario’ and ‘Brain Training’ now seem to top his vocabulary.

Perhaps I should applaud its education values rather than just complain about the time wasted on. Because Boy certainly does.

When I raise doubts with him over his time spent lounging on the sofa, face peering at the screen, thumbs going 10 to the dozen, he gives me a withering look and says with a plaintive cry "But I am Brain Training, Mummy. And if I miss a go my brain will not weigh as much."

And I guess there's not really a lot I can say to that.