About a year ago, I was at Toys 'R' Us with my wife and kids in the video game department. The kids were playing Mario Kart on the Wii U interactive, and a little boy - probably 8 to 10 years old - came up, watching intently, started to offer my son advice on the racing and talking about the characters; it was a really cute sight. I then told my kids that they should let the little boy play and that we could always play some Mario Kart when we got home.
It was then that the little boy thanked us and went on to say that it was the only way he would get to play a Nintendo game. He went on to say that it was only Xbox at home and that his dad would never allow a Nintendo console in the house because the games were for babies and that he should want to play games like Call of Duty. The boy was sad when saying this and finished by telling us that he didn't like violent games, found them to be scary, and that all he wanted to do is have fun with games like Mario Kart.
Before leaving, all I said to the boy was that it's good to be kind, and that he should have a talk with his dad about how he feels.
As a parent, the whole thing made me sad.
The world is the way it is because there are far too many parents that condition their children to be horrible people because they don't themselves realize that they are horrible people. Subjecting children to violent content when they don't yet have the maturity to process it is tantamount to abuse as far as I'm concerned.
