to ask if parents really let their year 4 dc play these games?

[purplehandgang]

So ds is cross because I won't let him have call of duty type games. All his friends have them apparently. (He can prove it apparently) One 8 year has access to gta too. Am I being too harsh to refuse.

My DSS is in Year 4 now and was bought COD a year ago as a birthday present by his aunt. I assume she ran it by DSS's mum first. I know DP wasn't happy about it, especially when the Xbox comes to our house on access weekends and DSS would want to sit and play it for hours (he isn't allowed more than an hour of COD at a time at our house though).

About six months after his birthday, he started sleepwalking and having bad dreams so COD was banned temporarily. It has been re-introduced slowly, but he's not allowed to play it after 5pm. Since then, he seems to have gone off it a bit anyway, although he did ask for the most recent COD for Christmas; he didn't get it.

I know that if he was my child, I wouldn't have let him have the game in the first place. There are plenty of entertaining and stimulating games that are age-appropriate, in my opinion, without ones where the aim is to blast people to smithereens

exactly apprenticeviper, it's not like COD is the ONLY game out there, there are hundreds of other games that are fun and age appropriate. Same goes with films, books etc....it's like giving a toddler a Coke, why? They'll be perfectly happy with water, milk or juice but parents still give them crap, I just don't get it.

let kids be kids.....

Doh! Should have gone to specsavers.

Agree it's too young. I'm not against games of that kind ( used to play AvP back in the day), but age limits are there for a reason

YANBU. Growing up my dad would never allow GTA to cross the threshold, my brother argued the toss, but it was like a flea to an elephant. I too will ban my son from playing GTA and other violent, sexual games, until he is of age. My house my rules!!

DS1 is 9 and I'm military-strict about the stuff he watches and games he plays. No idea why, I'm not anti-anything, really, but I just don't like the idea of him playing games categorised as beyond his years.

On the flip-side, though, there are plenty of his mates who do play those games; when they come for tea occasionally they'll bring an xbox one game and I will check it before saying yes and if I don't like it, they just don't play it. I've had one of his mates mums phone me after a playdate, furious that her DS wasn't allowed to play an 18-rated game. To me that's just bonkers. They're 9 years old, their main focus should be riding bikes, climbing trees and getting into mischief, not staring at a screen stealing fringing cars and trash-talking women.

I'm laughing I8yoys at your theory that you will have MORE control over him when he's a teenager!

I work in a game store, and can tell you that unfortunately many parents do buy these for their kids. We can only advise them of the content, and the reply is usually 'I know, he's mature enough' (I highly doubt your 8 year old is that mature), 'we play with the sound off' (that doesn't block out the visual violence and torture!!), a dismissive shrug or, my favourite, 'I know and i don't agree with it, but what can you do when they all play it?' (You can say NO like an actual PARENT and just NOT BUY IT!)
A lot of parents are clueless too. I've seen many a parent shocked when I tell them the content, as 'it's a video game!'. A majority of games are not for kids and yet they still think it's all kiddy-friendly happy fun.

ImCatbug Game very happily sold my (just) 12yo a 16 rated game last weekend without asking any questions. I wasn't with her. When I marched her back in to get her money back and ask wtf they were playing at, they really didn't care

I didn't say I would have more control over him when he was a teenager. I said I have control in my home of what he does and watches. I would prefer this than him sneaking off to his mates house and playing GTA. They come here and play COD whilst we are here. I watched him play it last night (their xbox is in my eyeline from the adult living room) and he just climbed up stuff and blew up an oil tank. Bit boring actually.

Oh and before anyone says he plays too much - never gets out etc etc. He had just come in from playing football with his mates and is now out goalkeeping for his footie team. It is not his life just a tiny part of it.

Lots of kids I know aged around 11/12 play gta and cod,nice middle class area, and their parents let them because "everybody else does".
Seems to be an epidemic of parents being utter fucking wimps lately.
Children my son's age in yr 4 are starting to talk about these games. One boy in his class was telling ds all about gta as his dad plays it. I don't even think I would be with a grown man who played gta let alone allow an 8 year old to play it.

My mother never kept tabs on what video games myself and my siblings played. She didn't understand why my youngest sibling would act up something awful after playing a game like COD. I had to take it in hand myself, explain very clearly that COD and GTA are highly inappropriate for anyone at least under 15. I'm quite liberal, but there's no way a kid/preteen understands the nature of these games (especially the new gen GTA which are more than just 'killing prostitues' like most ignorant people think).

My partner and I love gaming, I expect our kid will as well. However, I will keep to my views about video games, shooters/horror/high violence is not appropriate for children.

NO, but luckily none of his friends have them either as computer games are not such a big deal where we live now. When we lived in London, a lot of his friends had them, one had GTA at the age of 6.

When he was 8 he asked for GTA and Call of Duty with the whole 'but everyone else has it" and we just explained that we don't want him spending hours in a fantasy world where he has to kill people and break the law and we hoped that he wouldn't want that for himself either. Especially as there are so many more fun games on the market. He didn't ask again and has a lot of great games like FIFA, puzzle games and cartoony type fun games.

Interesting story today about a head taking a somewhat aggressive approach to this problem.

here

My 5 year old doesnt have access to a pc or games console at all.

Yep People do they also allow their children to watch sexually explicit films and programs you be surprised how many primary age children watch game of thrones and also very violent films I would imagin if the regulatory body had such a thing as 15a or 18a you would see 4,5 and 6 year old sitting down to 50 shades with their parents

I was just going to say that there was something in the news about this today.

I think it is very sad children of such a young age are playing 18 rated games. Luckily DS(10) is not interested in them at the moment and neither are his group of friends so haven't had to go through the "everyone else plays them" argument yet. However, I am aware of some children in his class who play them and have been doing so for a number of years

DS is 8 and in Y4 - no way would I let him play these games... he's still in to Minecraft and Wii Sports. But I do know there are about 4-5 boys in his class who are allowed to play these games - all are the troublesome ones and unfortunately they do take the piss out of the other lads who aren't allowed these things. Fortunately DS isn't interested as his group of friends are all like-minded to him, with fairly like-minded parents. I do feel sorry for him though with the peer pressure to be 'cool' involving things like this.

We didn't have Xbox until very recently, and the only CoD my kids had were the nintendo versions.

In the beginning i did not intentionally "let". But ds1 was often babysat by relatives, who had teenagers in the house, with games consoles in the living room. So the experience was there, want it or not.