Musings from and about my son Part 2
A couple of weeks ago, my 7-year old son Gabriel asked me if he could play Call of Duty.
Of course, I’m currently in Vietnam, and he’s in the U.S.
So I don’t know exactly what would have happened had I said, “Yes, dear son, you have my permission to permanently corrupt your mind with that game that nefariously blurs reality with fantasy, desensitizing you to the natural aversion bestowed upon all men by their Creator to killing other men.”
Had I said it that way, he probably would have laughed and told me I was silly.
What I did tell him is there’s no way he’ll ever play that game in our home at any age, under any circumstances. Even when I was in the army, I had a real problem with those types of video games, for reasons I’ve elucidated above – and that weren’t completely clear to me until I went through the process of being discharged from the military as a conscientious objector in 2014-15.
So I didn’t exactly go into the level of detail I just described. But I did tell him there’s an effect on the brain when you watch stuff like that. I told him that there are neurons in the brain that react to any type of stimuli we feed it, positive or negative. That if you feed it bad stuff like hurting others, your own brain will want to hurt others – even if you know it’s wrong to do so.
I may have even snuck the word neuroplasticity into the conversation (dad for the win 😉
At any rate, I don’t know how much of what I said was fully processed by his mind; the boy is only 7 after all.
But I believe in challenging children. I think it’s okay to speak to them as though they’re adults. Even though they’ll of course respond like a child, how else are they going to learn how to speak and behave like an adult?
Who doesn’t love a good challenge, right?
Tomorrow’s episode of the Trumpet Dynamics podcast will feature a man I know and admire who was severely challenged by the covid pandemic, and how he got to the other side of it.
It’s inspiring in its own right, although if you’re the type who says, “when in doubt just wear a double face mask”, you might want to skip it, as no effort was made to conform to the status quo narrative about the response to the virus.
So you’ve been warned.
Anyway, here’s the link to listen and subscribe to the show when this one and all future episodes are released.
https://jamesnewcombontrumpet.com/podcast/