Tragic Death of 15-year-old Boy
http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2008/11/05/crisp-body.html
“The teen disappeared on Oct. 13 after arguing with his parents over a favourite Xbox video game, Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare. They had taken the game away from him because they felt he had become obsessed with it and his many connections in the online gaming community.”
http://www.thestar.com/news/gta/article/537519
I wasn’t going to comment on this, as I have no intention of judging these parents. I see this more as a parent/child communication problem rather than a video game problem. It is so important to listen to our teens. Prevention would be best, so if your children are young, establish boundaries long before gaming gets out of hand. I think problem-solving is the best way to handle video game conflicts. In our home, we have always had the rule that Mature-rated games are not allowed. I don’t find the Teen-rated games to be too bad. Our video gaming is done in the living room, and I think it is a modern way of children playing together. The tragic story of Brandon Crisp reminds us to connect with our teens, and to be there for them, so they won’t feel the need to flee.
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How sad!
How incredibly sad. I feel for these parents.
Having a game system in the house scares me. We don’t have one right now, but my oldest is only 4. I’m sure soon enough he’ll ask for one.
I don’t know if I’ll allow it. Unless it’s a WII where actual physical movement is involved, how are the game systems different from what you could do on the computer?
I think the parent/teen conflict in this story was the trigger – not the video games themselves. And what happened in the end was like an accidental outcome.
The lesson I see from the story was for parents to work on attachment and communication with their teens, so that a 15-year-old would never consider getting on a bike and leaving home after an argument. I also think it would be a mistake to completely ban video games from the life of a teen boy.
I think gaming is important in this day and age. I don’t regret letting our boys get all these consoles – Wii, Xbox 360, PS3, PSP. I think they add an extra intensity, but I think lessons are continually learned because of gaming.
In a research paper I’m reading about attachment and adolescents, what comes across to me is how there is such a difficult balancing act in the teen years of learning healthy autonomy and forming healthy relationships. It is so much like toddlerhood, in which the child has a “secure base” from which he ventures forth to try new things.
Carol, it caught my attention when you wrote, “The lesson I see from the story was for parents to work on attachment and communication with their teens. . .”
One of the measures that were used in this study was an observed time parent/child interaction when discussing an issue that was already identified as a point of conflict. The measures were on two scales:
Quote:
(a) promoting relatedness, which captures
validating statements and displays of engagement and empathy with the other party and their statements;
(b) undermining relatedness, which sums ratings
of behaviors undermining relatedness by
overtly expressing hostility toward another member or by rudely interrupting/ignoring a family member;
(c) promoting autonomy, which captures use of
statements of the reasons behind a position and
a calm, confident tone in the discussion; and (d)undermining autonomy, which captures behaviors that make it more difficult for individuals to express autonomy in a discussion, such as by overpersonalizing
a disagreement, recanting a position without
appearing to have been persuaded the position is wrong (thus ending the discussion), or pressuring another person to agree other than by making rational arguments.”
I thought those were interesting ways to evaluate times of conflict. . . How can I promote relatedness and promote autonomy when I’m butting heads with my boys (or husband? *blush*)
FYI. . . Citation:
Joseph P. Allen, Maryfrances Porter, Christy McFarland, Kathleen Boykin McElhaney, Penny Marsh. The Relation of Attachment Security to Adolescents’ Paternal and Peer Relationships, Depression, and Externalizing Behavior. Child Development, Volume 78, Number 4 (July 2007), pp. 1222-1239,