Who else is tired (tired as a dog) of fending off request after request of their children for the newest, most exciting, blood-splattered, bone-crunching game? Is anyone else tired of explaining why it’s okay for a friend’s parents to give “Gorefest 2 – the Splattering” a thumbs up, but not appropriate for our house? Why we chose educational video games for childrenthe same reason we don’t watch R-rated horror movies. Or, namely: why I’m unfair, why I’m a tyrannical bully, why I’m hell-bent on destroying his popularity.

Why life is unfair.

There are always doubts. Is it unreasonable to deny him a game that I would actually like to play? I mean, I’m a gamer too. I was his age not too long ago, growing up in the infancy of console video games. I can say with little doubt that if the roles were reversed, if he was my father and I was his son frustrated with him, I would be begging, cajoling and manipulating my head to get the same games he wants. It seems very unfair to me, honestly, that his friends are allowed to play the games that we don’t allow in our house. It’s unfortunate that parents don’t have some kind of secret pact to come to a consensus, a common agreement, about what’s right and what’s wrong.

Initially, his mother and I agreed to limit his play time to educational games for children. And, at first, he was happy with what we gave him. Arthur was a common sight on the computer, telling a story, increasing vocabulary, encouraging reading. Mickey also appeared from time to time, jumping over numbers, helping to reinforce the basic math he had been learning. He enjoyed educational video games for children because he saw himself as a child. He was happy being a child; in fact, we were all happy with his situation. Juice boxes for everyone!

Then we stretched our rules a bit while he stretched. He talked me into a baseball video game. He didn’t have to try too hard to convince me; As a huge Mets fan and, at one point, shamelessly addicted to video games, the idea of ​​playing virtual baseball with my son was an easy concept to accept. I turned around and sold the idea to Mom. That it was not so easy. Baseball, as fun as it is, was definitely not an educational video game for kids. I weakly mentioned something about the game teaching math (division and averaging and such), but we both saw the weak argument for what it was.

She frowned, shook her head, and went back to her book.

Slippery slope, he said.

I assumed that meant “fine.”

However, he put conditions on it. Time Limits, an imaginary pie chart showing the time allowed with the baseball compared to their educational children’s video games. This was the beginning, unfortunately, of my son not accepting his “boy” role anymore. I don’t want to say that buying him a baseball game caused the change; rather, this was around the time I noticed him saying some of his childhood tricks: the blanket went into the closet, for example.

And while I have some fond memories of beating the pants off his Yankees with my Mets, this was also the time he began to prefer playing against the computer, rather than his father. Both in its educational games for children and in others.

It wasn’t long before he started testing us, asking us for games he knew he wouldn’t get. Provoking a copy of a game he’d been told he couldn’t play, then throwing a tantrum when he inevitably got caught. It’s at the unfortunate age where no matter how entertaining or fun the game is, if it’s an educational game for kids, it’s flat out rejected. Where before we could take home anything from the game store, we have now given up on buying educational games for children, as they end up dusty and forgotten in a pile near the television.

We’ve realized that we can’t control what you do at your friends’ houses. We have kindly asked other parents, whenever they deemed it appropriate, to keep the violent games on the consoles when our son visits us. Unfortunately, there have been times when friends of his have ostracized him for our requests; His friends sometimes blamed him for his parents’ rules.

I’m glad to see more and more Wii and DS titles that are bringing more fun and innovation to their educational games for kids. It’s nice to see that some of these recently released learning games aren’t getting the same stigma that learning games of recent history have. It’s nice that developers spend time and money making them fun enough to forget they’re learning as they play. Cosmos Chaos, “Brain” games and “Think” games are changing the lay of the land.

For now, though, we’re stuck in the trap that makes good parenting so difficult. Violence in video games isn’t an issue I’d like to see regulated by the government—the ESRB works fine for me. Violence isn’t even really a “problem” for most people. It just means that parents continue to expect a bigger stream of fun educational video games for kids, as we watch the river of violent games continue.