I bumped into this video recently which seemed to revolve around a dad that was forcing his son to smash his Xbox with a sledgehammer. Based on the title of the video, the reason was that his son was failing in school and so he felt getting rid of the video games this way would teach him a lesson to smarten up.
The thing that made me wonder a lot is that the title of the video was labelled as “Good Parenting”. I am sure everyone has different opinions about this, but to me things like these often feel like an attempt to find an easy thing to blame as opposed to focusing on items like the parent’s involvement in the child’s life.
I bet you could change this to a different hobby and it would be the same. Example, a child spending hours alone playing the piano all day which he/she ends up liking a lot. It will probably sound weird to most people if the parent then told the child “You can’t practice or play the piano anymore because of bad school grades” since playing a piano is more accepted as a good thing as opposed to entertainment items like video games. Imagine making the child smash the piano after too.
Then again, there is a possibility that this video is fake as well. It just reminded me of all the articles I have read in recent months of people trying to blame things like video games as the sole cause of influencing a child’s behavior. Either way, this is one wacky form of parenting I think unless parents are now using social media to discipline their kids.
Just from my personal experience too, video games can be a great way to teach people life skills and knowledge depending on the types of games they are playing. So just as if you took away the person’s piano where they can no longer harness their music skills you could be doing disservice to the child. Like most things, it needs to work in conjunction with a parent that is in-tune with the child’s growth I feel.