Why My Kids Won't Have a Video Game Console
I spent last night and most of today at winter camp with the local Boy Scout troop. It was cold, but not unbearable; temperatures were in the high 20s overnight and reached the high 30s at midday. I was only cold last night at about 4am, when I had to get out of my tent, walk across the camp site and tell a tent full of our scouts to keep quiet and go back to sleep. (This was a council camp, so there were several other troops camped in close proximity to us.)

The Klondike "games" were held today to foster troop cooperation and skill mastery. It's a pretty fun time for the boys and the healthy competition is good motivation to keep the boys involved. The games include team snowshoe races, fire building, timed lashing contests, orienteering, and the like. My own 11-yr-old patrol (that included a couple of the younger 12-yr-olds) struggled with the "iditarod", a contest where the boys must push (and/or pull) a sled of gear for about 1 mile around the perimeter of a frozen lake, stopping at several checkpoints along the way to demonstrate knot-tying, first-aid, and other skills. Since the snow at the camp was about two feet deep, I planned on doing this specific contest last... after the snow had been packed down. I think this worked to our benefit, but one boy, our 12-yr-old patrol leader just up and quit about halfway through the run. Since our time was measured against the slowest member of the team, the rest of the boys that were still running and pushing the sled were doing so for naught. So I put a lot of pressure on this boy to pick up the pace (which he did not do). I may have leaned on him a bit hard because after the contest was over and we had returned to our camp site, he walked over to the river and broke down emotionally.

I went over to this boy to try and cheer him up.

"Yo, what's up?"

"Just go away!"

"Hey, sorry for being so tough on you back there. I'm not technically your leader, so it wasn't my place. I won't be at your next camp..."

"I'm not going to the next camp. I don't even want to be here. My Mom made me come."

"Well, you can't say you aren't having a lot of fun with your friends."

"Yes I can. It's cold. I'm wet. I'd rather be home playing video games with my sister and my cousins."

"Playing video games instead of camping?! You can play video games tomorrow."

"No I can't. My mom won't let me play on Sunday. My cousins are in town just for the weekend and are probably playing all day today."

And he went on about his day-long video game opportunity missed.

So that's it. No video games at our house. I bought an XBox1 about, oh, I dunno... 6 years ago? It spends a lot of time on the shelf in the coat closet. Time to give it away... and never buy another console (or handheld) gaming system for myself or for the kids.

Note: When I got back home my wife said power in the area had been out most of the day. So this boy didn't "miss" anything.