They’re clearly not letting them do it unsupervised. As the child’s parent who is there, helping and supervising, that’s their business, not yours.
Your lane, sir, you have drifted out of it.
My son and daughter both played some over the last twenty years, my daughter lost interest in PC gaming in general for the most part but my (now adult) son was raiding Heroic ICC in WotLK Classic not long ago with his guild, we’ve always talked about and bonded over WoW stuff.
Not everyone grows up to resent their parents and everything that they like.
Like he hasnt already heard swear words in the grocery store, food places, gas stations.
I guess we shouldnt take him outside, he might get exposed!
We dont swear in our house so he’s not going to get it from us, but eventually he’ll pick it up somewhere amd when he does we’ll address it and he’ll learn that that is not appropriate language to be using and that will be the end of that.
Mhmm, that’s the key, adult supervision. I was playing this game around the ages 7-11 with at most “supervision” from my brother about 5 years older than me, but mostly unsupervised. And while I was forunate enough to not have any weird encounters, for the most part, I also didn’t talk much outside of my guild, or do high end content. I did do some classic/BC dungeons, even some PvP, but for the most part I was just vibing, collecting herbs, being a happy Alliance cat.
You don’t need to defend yourself about this stuff or drag your own mood down. You were there with him sharing an experience and supporting his online experience every step of the way.
Everyone has your back, no need to even defend it, it was a really cool story.
I tried letting him level up his own character but he got too frustrated trying to fight things and not understanding how the game works, even as I was explaing things to him, so we took a break after that, I figured he had lost interest.
But a week or so later he asked if he could play my character and that he wanted to fight something. But he wanted me to make sure it was something easy. So I let him target critters. And he proceeded to go around Valdrakken exterminating all of the critters. He particular likes heroic leap because you can jump on stuff.
Evntually he worked up the courage to try some “harder” stuff like mountain goats and then went from there. My character is pretty well geared so most things out in the world are easy enough and as a tank I dont really take any damage so this allowed him to experience things without fear of dying. Though he did manage to dismount a couple of times in mid air and die which led to a hilarious moment of “Im so sorry I killed your character! I didnt mean to, does this mean you cant play it anymore?” He thought death means game over, no more character.
He also didnt like that he couldnt fly on the dragons as a new character so that was a big part as well.
Thats great. My daughter is the same age and she loves to do the dragon races with me and pet battles and just run around as a druid. Hopefully we can play together in a few years.
That said, from now on when i see someone running wildly and bottoming the meters in LFR im gonna assume its a preschooler and move on.
I always let my kiddos loot a boss if I was farming mounts and stuff. I tell them, I need your luck!
So they would loot and loot and loot,. And when we get something everybody would freak out lol.
So fun
They are older now and don’t have much interest in it haha but I still do stuff with them that “requires their luck”. Opening Pokémon cards or something!
This was a great story and I don’t believe a word of it. That probably says more about how cynical I’ve become with the internet than anything else though.
Reminds me a lot of a story regarding an Everquest parent:
Husband plays Everquest, wife doesn’t and think games are a “waste of time” and all the usual negative stuff one would expect. One day the wife is out of the house, I think it was at the store and other stuff like that. So the husband is at home taking care of the baby, and the wife really, REALLY hates Everquest so much that she has told him to not play it and take care of the baby.
So… he’s at home, taking care of the baby, but there’s this new patch in Everquest he wants to play as well. But he doesn’t want to abandon the baby to do that so… here’s what happens:
The wife distrusts the guy and arrive home earlier than expected, coming home expecting the husband to be “playing his game” and discovers that the baby crib is empty! Shock horror! She goes to confront him and… he’s playing Everquest with one hand, and the other he’s rocking the baby who’s fast asleep, very soundly, and very happily. She asks him what he’s doing and “with one hand I’m playing Everquest, and with the rest of me I’m taking care of the baby”.
Gaming and parenting is easily two things that can go hand in hand when done correctly. Much like the Everquest husband, you certainly take care of both your kid and making sure your gaming is at a good and healthy level. Thank you so much for the post and you deserve all the upvotes in the world for this wonderful bit of positivity and awesome parenting! ^^
Account sharing is, but without sharing a password or connection details, the account wasn’t shared. No criminals here.
There’s no doubt, this is exceptional and not really a good rule to introduce all five year olds to the game, but sometimes you can fit right into the anonymous with supervision and play the game. This is definately a parental teaching moment, not a call to action. It’s one cute story.
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