Hysteria, Santa and Ibuprofen

So I read in the Monday paper that video games are distracting our youths.

An Iowa State University study found that kids who spend too much time watching television and playing video games have “attention problems.” Another bolt of lightning from academia.

“It is still not clear why screen media may increase attention problems, but many researchers speculate that it may be because of rapid-pacing, or the natural attention-grabbing aspects that television and video games use,” said lead researcher Edward Swing.

What? Sorry, I was checking Twitter.

Anyway, as I read, I wondered whether this could be a problem in my own household. Surely not.

Then, in a matter of minutes, high-tech hysteria broke out.

I heard crying and yelling, wailing and gnashing. My oldest daughter had misplaced her Nintendo DS video game. Desperate speculation centered on the possibility that she left it in her mother's car. And her mother's car was already well on its way to Iowa City. Noooooo.

I soon learned that this is a calamity worthy of the kind of sorrow usually reserved for the passing of close relatives or the cancellation of “iCarly.” It poured forth in torrents for this small, pink video game. Our dog, sensing tension, smartly sought refuge in her crate. I could not fit, so I waded into the fray.

I registered dismay, first in a gentle, caring tones, then less gently. Words such as “overreaction” and “ridiculous” were deployed. But I was pouring gasoline on fire.

In a frenzied counterattack, she dropped the big one. “I know who Santa really is ...,” she began, before spilling too many beans. Her 4-year-old sister sat nearby. Oh, wow.

You may remember about a year ago we agonized over this Santa subject. And, ironically, Santa may now have been undone by one of his greatest gifts, that bleeping, misplaced DS.

She had crossed the line, I told her, with considerable volume. And the look on her face suggested that she, indeed, grasped the stunning impact of her outburst. It had not been an effective strategy. The DS, I told her, would be off limits for a while. We quietly walked to the car for the trip to day care.

When we arrived at her room, several little friends sat huddled in a corner, staring into the glow of their own DS games. They excitedly greeted my daughter, who glumly told them the awful, awful truth. She had no DS today. They looked upon her with pity, for roughly a millisecond. Back to their little screens.

I turned my attention to downloading ibuprofen.

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