My Kids Fight My Bosses

Sometimes, you need to recruit an eight-year-old to take down a nasty fight, you know?

I stay very quiet when I’m standing in a parenting circle and the phrase, “oh, we’re really strict about limiting screen time with our kids” comes up. Ah, how much energy you must have, and how much time you have to shuttle your kids to a plethora of extracurricular activities, I think to myself.

Being in game development ourselves, my husband and I are in the actual business of needing to know what’s new and how to play as many of the 18,000+ games released every year that we can. It only makes sense to reap the rewards of having birthed my own playtesting focus group and Sackboy team of four.

“I need my children to play boss fights for me,” I sheepishly replied when it was just a mom friend and me in the car.

“What’s a boss fight?” she asked. I adore this friend and trust me, this is much better than the mom who asked if I work at GameStop when I told her, “I work in video games.”

“When you have an enemy that’s really hard to defeat,” I explained. Don’t we all wish our children could fight real life evil bosses for us?

“Child labor” is the only way I could get through the boss fights of Astro Bot (so full of delightful surprises), Split Fiction (flimsy story but fantastic variety of mechanics), and HOA (precise platformers are a killer for me but OMG what a brilliant soundtrack).

I’m there for joyful experience, not frustration. My youngest son, currently eight, likes to gloat a little—nay a lot—about how his video game prowess works in my favor. In the spirit of validation, I say as enthusiastically as possible: “Yes, honey, thank you so much. It wouldn’t have been a lot of fun to be stuck and never progress.”

Husband and I know that “screen time” is sacred to our kids, pertaining more specifically to video games but it includes YouTube. I once fined the littlest for acting up during a piano lesson, but taking away video game time is for when you did something really offensive—usually something I nagged about and they neglected to do.

We’re pretty lax about the time available on weekends and holidays if we’re just home and enjoying our mortgage, but I changed up the rules after finding the kids playing at an ungodly hour.

And if I’m really being honest, we recently had a discussion about how playing Wobby Life with your brother does count as screen time, and that does not entitle us to extra hours. However, helping Mommy and Daddy with boss fights and punishing platforming is not included in daily screen time allowance.

Now, don’t go thinking I’m some gamer weakling. I can Megastar in Just Dance, outbeat the rest of my household in Beat Saber, produce the expensive stuff in Coral Island, and finish all my own point-and-click indie games barring game-breaking bugs.

When spinning the copywriting wheel, I wax poetically that video games teach us things like perseverance, dexterity, hand-eye coordination, cooperation, problem solving, and time budgeting, that last one because on weekdays, my kids are only supposed to play for two hours.

I have no idea if we’re actually learning these things. Notice I didn’t include quicker reflexes. But skill-building time allocation means both children can be very sweet and responsible and that’s more important to me than catching a ball.

“Ugh, I’m gonna rage quit!” screams my frustrated 11-year-old.

“No!” I protest. “You’ve been training your whole life to get me through this level!”

And it’s true. He’s been playing video games since he was in diapers and we should have really used increments of screen time to bribe him to potty train.

“Okay,” he grumbles. And then runs away as soon as he and the little one have done stuff like the hard boss fight in Split Fiction where round chainsaws attack you relentlessly.

We’ve had similar conversations before.

“I don’t really want to play with you, Mommy.”

“Hey, I made you pancakes!”

“Oh, yeah!

“So…you’re gonna shoot the monsters for me.”

“Okay, fine.”

The adventures continue.

---