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| photo creation Antoine Geiger |
I am going to start out with a hyperbolic rant: Mobile phones suck. They make parenting no fun and ruin a lot of things. (Like all these people looking at their mobile phones in a museum. W.T.F.?
This just finished weekend as anecdotal evidence. I had to get up "early" to play Monopoly. Well, ok, I told my girls "dont wake me up before 9am because i need some good sleep". I just got my first shot of Moderna vaccination this last week and it tired me out and gave me such a pain in my arm that I had to take off my Saturday work and rest. So sleep till 9am. And dont get me wrong, I absolutely love playing Monopoly with my daughters. I think it is one of the best things to do with kids inside the house. But having the bed covers pulled off of me dampens my enthusiasm.
But what does my older daughter start to do after we had started playing? She starts watching her mobile phone. During Monopoly. She watches in between her turns. This made me angry. She said it was only going to be for 55 minutes as she wanted to watch the boards of Formula 1 racing. Ach du Lieber. I said she couldnt do that, she had to concentrate on one thing and that was all of us playing Parker Brothers Monopoly.
She said, then she wouldnt play. She had me. I was going to say, "ok, just me and my other daughter will play" but then I thought, oh, its better to have her play while glancing at her mobile instead of totally lying on the couch and just watching her mobile phone and doing nothing else. So I let her. Very reluctantly.
But then since her sister got to watch her mobile when it wasnt her turn, my younger daugther got the ipad and started playing brawl video game in between her turns. This made me angrier, but all she said was, "if she gets to look at her mobile, I get to play on the ipad." It was quickly becoming no fun. In fact they wanted to go to jail and stay there for three turns just so they could watch F1 or play video games in between. It just wasnt fun for me, but I continued. I would rather have been doing something else myself, like doing the dishes, or making a tea. The only good thing about it, was my younger daughter never looked at the board so when we landed on her properties we didnt say anything and didnt pay and she lost a lot of money not paying attention. You do realize the unwritten rule is that if a property owner doesnt notice that another person is on the property then the other person doesnt have to pay once they have left the property. It doesnt matter though, she will probably end up winning anyway.
Can you believe that? Wanting to stay in jail, just you can play video games while you are in jail? Ferocious.
The electronic gadgets are a continual source of friction between us the parents and the kids in this household, AS I have a feeling they are across much of the world in many many millions of households. I hate Steve Jobs. People say he was a genius. I say he has wrecked more homes and made parenting THAT much harder in our modern life. Tim Cook doesnt have any kids so he probably doesnt know or give a damn either. A curse on both of them. I hope Steve Jobs is wallowing around in the black tars of Hell being whipped with fire all day by red devils. I love to imagine his screams coming from Hell. "But but but, how can you do this to me? I invented the iphone." "Exactly," says the red devil and continues whipping him with a sea of fire. Maybe even Johnny Cash is doing the whipping. (Then they ll burn burn burn, in the sea of fire, in the sea of fire)
There really isnt a day that goes by that we dont have to yell at them or control their use of the cell phones. I mean, the logical person will say, well limit their time on the gadgets. Sure. But the thing is a. you can say ok, an hour of TV a day, 2 hours of video games a day, but they are both on the same gadget, so the kids can just say, " I have half an hour left of my TV time" and continue playing video games in actuality. b. They often have to do homework on the gadgets, so if you will yell at them they will yell back, "Im doing my homework". And then what are going to do? Sit over them and watch while they do their homework. You cant turn the internet off because then they cant do their homework. Or my wife is also using a gadget to do some business work. It just gets very complicated to limit the gadgets or turn them off. Although I have done that in the past when my wife wasnt at home. Then I would have to do other things too. But it is worth it to me that they are limited in their time. If there is a way of blocking or limiting ALL TV you tube and video games while still allowing them to use the gadget to do their homework, I would be interested in this.
As it stands now, it is a continual battle of parents against the gadgets. And if you tell them no TV or games, well then they yell at you, " I am listening to music, I am listening to spotify". And well, is that one so terrible? Difficult. Difficult Or else my daughter has told me, "I am watching National Geographic tv channel" and what are you going to do? Turn that one off too? She has me by the neck I tell you. I really wish she would put it down and take up reading again. I yelled at her to do that today and she read her Simpsons comic book for ten minutes. Ach mein Gott.
In the end, I just have to deal with the conflict. I guess it is part of the modern family. No beating or whipping, but yelling to stop playing video games. And push my younger daughter to stop watching her sit coms on the cell phone. Oy.
Well all I can hope for is the eternal damnation of Steve Jobs.
"And this one is for ruining Max s weekend Monopoly game with his daughter, Jobs" "Ahhhhhhhhh".
I didnt listen to anything while I was writing this one. I wanted perfect concentration.
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