I sympathise – I threw an Xbox in the pond!
Kirstie Allsopp has come under fire for revealing that she broke her young sons’ ipads in front of them. “In June, I smashed my kids’ ipads – not in a violent way. I actually banged them on the table leg,” the TV presenter confessed. “I decided that we had made all sorts of rules and all sorts of times when we said you can’t play them and all those rules got broken. In the end, I said, ‘Right, I have to physically (break them)’.”
The purse-lipped Perfect Parenting Brigade has criticised the mother of Bay, 12, and Oscar, 10, for being “petty and authoritarian”. Not to mention reckless and wasteful. “She could have donated them to her local school/gp practice/day centre for OAPS or put them on ebay for charity,” fumed one.
I wonder, have any of Allsopp’s critics ever tried to get a boy and his video game to part company? Sample dialogue:
Mum (brightly): “Darling, dinner’s on the table.”
Boy (does not look up): “’K”
Mum (slightly less brightly): “K is not a word. Put that thing away now.”
Boy (does not look up): “Five more minutes.”
Mum (voice tightening): “You said five more minutes 10 minutes ago. Now, please.”
Boy (face contorted with concentration): “Can’t pause it, Mum.”
Mum (picks up the video game case, suddenly drops the sing-song Julie Andrews approach, starts channelling Miss Trunchbull): “Why does it say PG 18+? Put that down, NOW! Give that thing to me, give it here, give it…” Under the circumstances, I reckon Kirstie displayed admirable restraint. Watching your offspring zombified by games, which are deliberately designed to be addictive, induces feelings of helpless rage. One day, when my son was about the same age as Kirstie’s boys, I finally snapped. Setting time limits for play hadn’t worked, neither had confiscating the wretched device. So, snatching up the Xbox, I ran down the garden in my slippers and threw it into the pond.