Video Games, The Future, and The Pressure to Plan

A recent Twitter conversation with an old friend reminded me of why I’m glad I don’t helicopter or push the kids more than I do. It’s not for a lack of wanting them to succeed, I do. But I feel more and more every day that our kids are under enough pressure to be successful on their own so why should I add to it?

If that makes me a slacker mom, then bring it on.

The core of our conversation rotated around our two oldest children. I was looking for some information on the best way for my teen to get into video gaming; writing about it, reviewing games, etc. He’s considering being a game designer when he’s older and is just now starting to ask what he might do that would be fun, but helpful to him. So I asked my friends on Twitter.

My suggestion to him was start a blog about video games, computer games and the like. Get into the web 2.0 space and start learning from the people already out there.

My friend’s suggestion was to find him courses in Math, English, and Japanese.

Really? My goodness. The boy barely has body hair and we’re already looking at courses for the future. I just picked up his 8th grade class schedule today!

At any rate, my friend and her daughter are already planning for her Master’s degree. The girl is only 10 months older than my son.

This is where I take pause and try to remember that our kids will likely be facing a tougher job market than we did. We were graduating when the market was good, people were buying, selling and our economy looked all bright and shiny like new penny. So it makes some sense to want to have them prepared.

While my friend is positive that she’s not pressuring or pushing her daughter, I still wonder what would happen if I took the same standpoint in my own house.

Mass. Revolt.

So while I’m a slacker and dead set on NOT pushing or pressuring my kids to grow up and move out tomorrow, I’m also conflicted. They have a much harder world than we did (and my parents and their parents and so on) but they also have more options. More avenues that they can explore.

But the pressure is on. It’s there. And maybe that makes me an even worse mom for not sitting down this young man who’s voice cracks on every other word he speaks right now, and start looking at colleges and exploring his options.

After all, my friend’s motivation for getting her daughter ready now is that she doesn’t want her kid to be 24, living on her couch and attending college part time. I don’t either but I refuse to believe that all these decisions need to be made now, or in a year from now.

Can’t we just let them grow up first? At 13 and 14, many teens can’t even choose what they want for breakfast or decide what to wear and here we are expecting and figuring out what’s going to happen to them four or five years from now.

Maybe some teens are that driven and ready to get on with the future but for others, I expect that there is as much confusion about the present as there is the future.

Rather than prepare and plan for them, I feel we should spend some time solidifying our bonds with them. I don’t always have clean socks for them, dinners might be thrown together at the last minute, and we’re not gathering college guides by the truckload but we’re talking about what is mattering to him right now; girls, school, friends, and yes, video games.

I’ll tackle the future… in the future.

image credit: brokenarts

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