#parentinggenz

We know parenting is not for the faint hearted.  But hey, parenting Gen Z has to be the most challenging of all the generations past.  My husband and I are constantly battling over the obsessive use, thought, and desire over technology.   We delayed as long as we could with giving my 13 year old a Smart phone.  Then one day he used the “poor me, everybody has fortnight and I don’t. I don’t have friends because I have never played fortnight...” and on and on he went about how disadvantaged and excluded he is from his peers because we won’t buy him an X-box or an upgraded Play Station and we won’t give him a Smart phone.  I don’t know about you but when my child says he’s excluded from social circles because his parents won’t give him a certain thing everyone is into, that breaks my heart.  It’s not like we can’t afford to give it to him but I just see ZERO value in gaming and wasting hours on it.

I don’t mind it when they use it for productive activities like research, gaining useful skills and knowledge for their future adulthood but it so bothers me when they idle their time on mindless games in the name of gaining “strategic skills”.  Strategic skills my foot. Nothing prepares a person for strategic skills like real life situations do. I can see those choices building my son up into a BAN - a Boy in a man’s body.

Anyway, I have just confiscated my 13yo’s smart phone for a week, with an additional day added for every time he tries to talk me out of it.  I’ve been lenient and had back tracked 2 days, so he’s now on 8 days and counting.  I’ve told him for every mention of a gaming opportunity he tries to secure in his conversation to me, the ban will extend by another day.  I am seriously so sick of our conversations just being about games the whole time.  This can’t be good for any child.