black ops?

[controlfreakery]

my 13(and a half) year old son only wants one thing for xmas... cod black ops (18 cert). I am 99% sure that I don't want to buy him this. he thinks i am mrs meany mcmean from meantown. is he right??please let me have your views...

He is wrong.

bump?

DS 14 next week isn't allowed any games that are 18 certificates he knows the rules and is happy with them. I'll go with a 16 but no higher than that.

my 16yo has this, which I'm not too worried about content-wise, but I think 13/14 is too young. It's also very addictive and they end up spending far too much time on it imo. I'd hold out a bit longer if I were you.

There's two threads already a little lower down.

Basically I think it comes down to why you are against it. Is it because you fear he won't be able to self regulate his gaming time and be lost in cyberworld? Or is it because you fear he'll turn into a gun toting psychopath and garrote his teacher with your dental floss?

If its the first then fair enough. If its the latter then I'm with him!

My DS(9) plays the other COD games (not got black ops yet) and so far he's still the gentle child he always is.

I'm still confident if I put an AK47 in front of him that he wouldn't be able to field strip it and that he'd hasn't tried to slit the cat's throat with his dinner knife.

I do however make sure he doesn't play ANY games too much and will boot him off the TV if he's playing too much.

I think at 13yrs old, you need to trust he can distinguish fantasy from reality.

I'm buying it for ds who is 15 this month (for his birthday).

He's played other stuff along those lines, the names escape me as it all bores the socks off me, he also want the latest guitar hero game for xmas and he'll be having that too (I'm saying that because he has other interests too not just the war type stuff).

I don't think they take it as seriously as some adults do tbh, they see it as a game? Well that's what I hope think anyway.

What Niceguy said.
My nearly 15 yr old got Black Ops this November, and had CoD last November when they were nearly 14.

No problems at all.

Again with Niceguy who has also made some good points on this on earlier threads.
If you search black ops you will find there is a huge divide on MN. IMO there are a lot of negative comments made by people who do not have teenage boys.

Against
They would spend all day on it.
It is violent.
There is bad language.

For
They can play online with friends (great when you live in rural isolation).
It's an outlet for aggression.
They won't hear any language they couldn't hear at school or a football match.

I restrict it rigidly. You have to lay the ground rules in advance.
My quiet, mild mannered shy DS is not going to turn into Rambo.

Last time I looked DS was a teenage boy You can say no to your kids you know, you are supposed to be the adult. I think Microsoft have completed an absolute marketing triumph if parents feel their under 18s MUST have a game that is meant for older teens/adults.

I have teenage girls rather than boys - but I teach teenage boys and know how many of them are actually awake playing games like this when their parents think they are in bed (this being after they've convinced their parents, who are mostly very poor, that they need a computer in their room to do school work).

so those of you in the "they can distinguish fantasy from reality / it won't turn him into a gun wielding psychopath" camp... can I ask, would you let your teenagers watch similarly violent cert 18 films? is it ok iyo because it's graphic not "real" or because it's interactive? or do they watch texas chain saw massacre as well as play black ops? genuinely interested and trying to clarify what i think...

I have a 17 year old DS1 who asked me to buy the game for him and I did (he gave me money out of his wages)

He is practically an adult and IMO is able to deal with the difference between fantasy/reality

There is however a strict rule that DS2 11 is not allowed to play on it and if I find out is has/does then the games console gets confiscated and DS1 loses all allowance.

This is because I know that DS2 is not able to cope with the violence and he can still get violent nightmares.

Sorry waffled a bit there.. but basically it depends on the child involved.

Also DS1 does watch those awful violent 18 films because he can deal with them and I know if I didn't let him watch them legally on DVD he would just watch them illegally online.

However similar rules apply about the younger DC seeing the films. He knows this is unacceptable and tends to watch the films on his laptop after the younger DC have gone to bed.

Your son is wrong. It's an 18.

It also causes huge friendship divisions between those that have and those who have not. I suspect this is why most parents give in and buy it.

Why would you buy 18 rated for a 13 year old?

Being 11 weeks pregnant with DC1 I am totally green about these matters, so anything I have to say is pointless

But what I will say is that my DH is a secondary school teacher and he says that boys and girls, across all the year groups, are utterly obsessed with Black Ops. It's all they talk about. I expect your son has played it at friends' houses, etc, etc, and that you can't really stop him having access to it.

Having said that, my mum didn't let us have ANY computer games and no TVs in our bedrooms until we were 16 (and never a PC in the bedroom). I also occasionally thought she was Mrs Meany McMean from Meantown but I understood her reasons anyway and I always knew deep down that she had a point. It won't do any lasting damage to your relationship if you do put your foot down.

Niceguy2 makes a good point. What are your initial reasons for saying no?

I personally think it depends in the child.

It never ceases to amaze me that if you are talking about child development generally, people always say children develop at their own pace and you as a parent know them best.

As soon as some authority or another puts some kind of arbitrary age restriction on something, some people see it as a line that must not be crossed, whether that is game / film certificates or weaning age.

If you are saying no because you think your son is too young / immature to handle the violence / swearing etc and will copy the swearing and get nightmares then don't let him have it.

If you think it is because he will copy the violence, then you are being a bit precious.

If you think it is because he will spend too long playing it then you shouldn't let him have a games console at all because the same could be said for any game.

I missed the gaming generation by a few years, but my parents (and my friends parents) were quite happy to let us watch horror films from the age of 12/13 - we spent many a sleepover watching the Nightmare on Elm Street Films.

My brother used to watch Aliens and Terminator from quite a young age and also used to play Halo when he was 14 (although that was only rated 16).

This was allowed because our parents knew we could handle it.

No I would not let him watch 18 rated films. Hypocritical, yes but you are right that it's to do with the game being graphic not real.
The social side of it is huge. While the girls may be texting or on facebook the boys meet up online on COD. If it were not for that DS would rarely have contact with all his friends except at school because of where we live.

The main risk from COD as I see it is playing it to unregulated excess. When I say I am strict I mean it. I am a tyrant about how long is allowed and when. He is in year 10 and highly motivated academically, homework comes first during the week. Rules a little less stringent at weekends.

The x box is not in his bedroom.
I do see his friends red eyed from late night sessions in their room. Whether their parents do not mind or care I can't work out. And these are not poor kids they are all from comfortably off professional backgrounds.

My answer is a bit more about the content of this particular game as I don't have any problem with gaming generally, or teenagers playing first person shooters.

I've just bought it to play with DH and imo the violence is too graphic for a 13 year old. It opens with a very unpleasant and bloody scence of a soldier tied up and being tortured. I can barely watch it.

I've played a number of first person shooter games recently (Halo - cert 16, Lost Planet 2 - cert 15). They are not graphic and the violence is no more than cartoon-ish. My 12 and 14 year old nephews play them and I think it's fine. In fact sometimes I play with them.

But Black Ops is pretty unplesant and in a different category. If you'd be happy with your DS watching violent cert 18 films like Saw then this is probably comparable.

Would you let him watch an 18 movie at 13? Would it be right to do so? If not then why should a game be any different? Also have DS 13 and am very unpopular. "Everyone else has it/plays it." But that doesn't make it right.

I have a 13yo son, so am not being all judgy with no knowledge of the subject, as has been hinted at upthread- and on some of the other threads

I've seen this game in play (round ds's friends' houses) and tbh I don't think he's emotionally ready for it. I let him play it elsewhere, because he's convinced me that he'll be shunned otherwise, but I won't buy it for him.

I have, however, palmed him off with got him Assassin's Creed for Christmas. It's also got violent content, but it's a 15, so we'll see how he goes with that

tbh I really, really hate violence- I'm happy with swearing, a bit less happy with sexual content, but violence is right at the bottom of my list. In my personal experience, 13 yo boys spend too much time playing COD games and get all wide eyed and shirty afterwards. Of course this doesn't apply to other posters' kids, it's my personal view.

Patsy might check out Halo as well- thanks for the tip

Face it. The vast majority of young boys with this game have it because they would be socially excluded without it.

Trust your instincts. If you don't want him to have it, don't buy it. You know your son better than anyone else. You could ask for a demo in the shop and then decide?

But Pointy - it's really sad to think that justifies buying it imho. Surely we want to raise our children to be able to say, 'sod peer pressure.' A lot of my daughters' friends are getting laptops/i-phones for Christmas. It doesn't mean that I feel I have to get myself down to Apple or face them becoming lepers.

oh I don;t think that justifies buying it at all, ghoul. I am agin it and seeing the exclusion annoys me.