Calling all Minecraft Mums

[ResolvedtoResolve]

DS is 10 years old, an only child. He is highly sociable and adores playing Minecraft, especially since developing a friendship with another boy at school. For some months they have MinecraftedSkyped before and after school and were playing happily at school together. This has become toxic. Although I have tried to be open-minded, I can only tell it from what I know about DS and from DS’s point of view.

The other child wanted to change to a more combative Minecraft game, and DS felt constantly attacked within the game. The pair of them fell out & my child retaliated with some kind of technical sabotage. The other child escalated this in the playground by involving another boy who stirred things up by lying about what DS had said. DS became very upset and School dealt with it. The Minecraft boy’s father contacted me (I had been on the brink of contacting him anyway). We put our heads together, realised that our boys were struggling to resolve things between them, and we helped them to resolve their differences and smooth things over.

They fell out again the very next time. I was inclined to leave it to sort out by themselves this time, but the other child’s parent WhatsApped me again, this time taking at face value what his son said, accusing my child of all sorts, by the way including swearing at his child some weeks back, and that DS had better be careful not to be socially isolated again. I found this approach to be very offensive especially the bit about the swearing which I am very certain to be untrue, and said so, to which he made a politician’s apology along the lines of “If I have upset you then I am sorry …”. I was not impressed and did not reply.

The next morning the other child contacted DS & apologised, and we allowed DS one more chance to Skype/Minecraft with this child, but this morning, after just two days of peace DS reports that this child said to him this morning “My mum says that your mum is …”. I know not whether his mum said anything at all. I am just so, so weary of this.

Thank you for reading this far. Now that I’ve come to the end I’m not sure what I’m asking. Parental involvement doesn’t seem to have worked and I just want what feels like endless sniping to stop. Is it reasonable to now insist they don’t make any online contact at all and avoid playing just with each other at school? And should I message the other parent to tell them why? Or will that just up the anti? I would like to be the grown-up here, but feel I also need to protect DS.

They will have changed the server from creative to the sort where things can kill you, I can’t remember what it’s called. What do you mean ‘constantly attacked ‘ if enemies were killing your child and not the other child attacking him or making traps to kill your child’s avatar and he has ruined the other child’s base then your DS was in the wrong here and that’s what kicked it all off. Obviously things have escalated and got out of control.

I have been through this with both DS and minecraft. In the game it is very fun to play cooperatively and do joint adventures. Its also very easy to accidentally annoy or deliberately play tricks and grief/troll your friend. It doesn't help youtubers do this this to each other all the time.
With my oldest DS, he played with a group of well established friends, where I knew the parents well. They would fall out reguarly, with accidental and deliberate griefing. As mums, we mostly used it as a learning curve to force or encourage them to take breaks from gaming, as the emotions can be overwhelming for young kids, and not take things to heart. We all knew our kids were both instigators + victims and encourage playing in real life to hekp mend bridges.
With my 2nd DS, he played with a looser group of kids. They more quickly fell out and got mean to each other. Despite parents getting involved it happened again. My DS could not control his emotions about it, would get so angry and upset. He turned into a horrible kid. We stopped him playing with others for a week, he was great but the moment he went back within an hour he was raging again. He was permanently banned. He just wasn't mature enough emotionally and couldn't rationalise it as just a game. He also wasn't close enough to the other kids in real life.
It maybe that your kid is just simply not ready for online gaming. Or they need to play more with someone else in the same room to understand how to do it.
Do you play with them? I played with mine and it really helped. They got the stupid picking on someone stuff out their system on me. Perhaps try to set up real life play dates with this other kid to play on xbox/playstation/switch together.
I would also look at what youtubers he is watching. Some do battles or last man standing type games that involve turning on your friends. I recommend Hermitcraft, as family friendly and any trolling or jokes are taken light heartedly and friendly.
I also find kids that play fortnite are often less able to play cooperatively without turning on their friends, because they are used to the more competitive, winner takes all mentality of that game.

We never had so many tears and fallings out as we did in the online Minecraft playing years. The number of times one friend or another would steal another’s stash or destroy a build - all as guilty as each other!
Things are much better since they’ve moved onto playing Fortnite online with each other - I resisted it for years!

If you can't play nicely together then you don't play at all.

Is a manta in our house. Just block the other child from your child's online friends and stop them play together.

BTW if you don't know how to do this, then your child should not be playing a game you cannot adequately supervise.

I could have written this, though not minecraft, just general playground antics and parents getting involved/not getting involved. The problem is that children change so quickly, and the nature of friendships with them that one moment you can be sworn enemies and the next the best of friends. It's tough to keep up!!

What I resolved is that my son is going to have to learn how to deal with all sorts of interactions in his life, some that will be enriching for him and some not so much. Me storming in (wanted or otherwise) and banning him from having certain friendships is likely to end up with me being the enemy/something to rebel against (if the following week they're besties again for example). So instead I said lots of things like "I don't think this friendship sounds like it's bringing you a lot of happiness at the moment", or we'd speak about what it means to be a friend and then thought about how to handle people who didn't make us feel good about ourselves. It didn't help much that the other family got the school involved and asked them to intervene in the friendship. The school however said the boys are fine in class, so it's an outside school issue and needs to be resolved between the boys/us as families. The other family wouldn't speak with us, they wanted the school to mediate. In the end my son decided for himself to distance himself from the other child for a while and find others to play with. Fast forward a few months and they're thick as thieves again of course. But I like to think he's learned something about who he wants to spend his time with.

There's a nice analogy about a candle light. We all have a flame within us. Some people like to blow out others flames when they think it's shining brighter than their own. You should surround yourself with people who see the light in you and cherish it, not want to extinguish it. Might need to tweak those words to make them more kid friendly, but you get my gist!

Sounds like your son is learning the lesson of the sunk cost fallacy — that past returns on a friendship are no guarantee of future performance.

All you can really do is help him realise that the juice ain’t worth the squeeze.

This is not about Minecraft, this is about 10 year olds and friendships changing where one child is starting to get bored and wants to do new stuff (in this case Survival rather than Creator mode). It is also about branching out with other friends and not having the social skills to make these changes without rejecting things and people he used to like.

Unfortunately your son is on the receiving end of this and it doesn't sound like the other boy's parents are handling him well, so I would encourage your son to avoid this kid.

Thank you for all your replies. Much appreciated. I have to say this has tested my parenting skills as nothing before!