Day: March 14, 2014

Atop the list of tough things I have to do as a parent is withholding video games from my kids. I’m a gamer. I was born in the age of Atari. I swung through the Amazonian jungles with Pitfall Harry. I fought ghosts with the help of magical pellets. I saved the universe from the straight lined assault of pixelated aliens. When my parents tore me away from the console I moaned like it was a ghost limb. Now, despite saying like I’d never become my mother, I’m doing the same thing.

The 11 hour rule is something I instituted at the beginning of the break. The first day of break my kids stayed up all night playing Kindle games and then woke up ofter a few hours rest and played Xbox, etc the entire day. By the following night their eyes were bloodshot and they were grumpy and very unhealthy looking. I decided that from the moment games go off, the kids must wait 11 hrs to turn them back on again. If they go to bed at 7:39 PM they can start playing games at 6:39 AM the following morning. This has been an uncomfortable process to say the least. This morning my mid-kid switched the clock on his Kindle to convince me it was 8:25 when it was actually 7:25. After another 20 minutes of grumbling the trio decided upon lego play and actually had a good time of it.

Video games are wonderful. When my mom yanked the cord out I felt like she killed me a little. I’m certain the kids feel the same about my actions. I’m mature enough now to understand that she did it for a good reason. Kids need to know how to do more than mash buttons. They need to be able to find amusement in more than staring at screens–staring into other people’s imaginations–for their excitement. Part of that is on me as a parent to set the firm boundaries necessary to give space for creative play. Part of that is on them as children to take advantage of the opportunities the world affords.

When I was a kid I recognized that older people tended to worry about stuff. That worry manifested as attitude, anger, stress lines, heart attacks, binge drinking, and things the web is far too tame for me to recount here. New York is the capital of ‘work hard, play hard’ and likely birthed the phrase ‘burning the candle at both ends’. I decided back then that I would avoid a stress filled life and do as much as I could without overloading myself. This was a deeply naive notion. Now vacations are merely opportunities to catch up on the things that should’ve been done long ago and being off balance is merely a way of life.

This isn’t about being whelmed or overwhelmed. It is about the choices we make in life and how those choices affect us from day to day. Say for example you decide to coach a team. There are a lot of things that go into being a coach that extend far beyond handling players on the field and running practices. Each of those minute responsibilities are like tiny tick marks rubbing up against your conscience. Every morning I wake up and tell myself to make a list. Every day the list extends further and further.

We make up platitudes like, “the universe gives us as much as we can handle’ but I don’t find that to be accurate. The universe throws as much at us as it can manage. Whether or not we have the capacity to handle it is moot. I hope I can continue to handle what I do and survive what I don’t.