Today is the first day back to school for my son. His last year in Junior High! I spent quite awhile getting him registered this morning, he changed schools this year. The woman registering him told us he had classes that were in outside units wanting to just let him find them himself. Um, where outside? Oh, he can just look around, was the answer. Heck, I'm 32 and I still would have wanted to be shown where the hell they were. I told her this was unacceptable and someone, be it the principal, her, the teacher next door- someone- would show him where to go or I wasn't leaving. Do you understand? 'Yes, mam!'
I suppose you could say I'm sort of an imposing person these days. When I was my sons age, much like him, I was very shy and scared to ask for anything. While he isn't as shy as I was, I understand being shy. I had a rough childhood at times, which made me probably more introverted than most kids. I remember being too shy to ask for things and have my brother ask. To this day I'm making up for lost time on being assertive- ha!
Anyhow, enough about my childhood. I am not a person to take no for an answer if I don't have to. It made me think of being a gaming parent. How? When I mention I have a kid most people are like aww how old is he? When I mention he is in his early teens it's generally thought of oh he's old enough to take care of himself. Just because a kid is old enough to function mostly with out parental guidance doesn't mean I get to be any less of a parent.
When I was a younger gamer I would not even bother raiding, though I wanted to. I did at one point and it was too much a strain and resolved only to do so on weekends or late in the evenings after he was in bed. Even now telling friends 'AFK a min to tell my son goodnight", gets: 'Isn't he like 15?' as a reaction. 14 actually, and that doesn't mean I can't hug him goodnight and make sure he goes off to bed. Trust me, teenagers will try to stay up as late as possible if you don't watch them!
Most of my gaming friends don't have kids. I think I currently have one who has a child and she isn't even gaming much these days. So it's really something that a lot of people don't understand. Sorry guys I need to log to make supper, it has to be done. I have to make sure homework is done. If I didn't I wouldn't feel like a decent human being.
I think the idea of gaming with others, as in raiding and grouping, scares off a lot of gaming parents. People get upset if you have to afk. Me, I afk if my dog needs to go out, my world doesn't stop when I log in. People have a hard time understanding that though. But I'm not one to make people wait around on a regular basis. This most often happens on raids that take several hours. In our current guild the hours picked were not of my choice but I try to make it work.
For years I was a single mom, the only parent my son ever knew. People have different reasons why they do the things as they do. Maybe I'm a little over protective at times, other times his friends think I'm the worlds coolest mom. Let me be a mom as long as I can! Remember we don't always know as much as we think about the people behind our friend's toons.
So next time you're gaming and someone has to tuck the little one in or make sure the kid isn't setting the house on fire- Give them a break! It's a lot of work being a parent, we already get enough sulky answers as it is!
-kaozz
