jeffsg4mac said:
When I first met my wife, the oldest boy was 6 and the youngest was a baby. While she was at work and school, her parents let them sit in front of the TV and game machine all day and the oldest never played outside. He had no idea what to do outside, no imagination at all. It took a good year to break this. I also think they did damage to him because his grades have never been as good as the younger ones.
Don't lay all the blame on video games for the difference in grades. I'm old enough to have grown up before there were video games. My sister and I have almost exactly the same IQ's, we both could read before the age of three. Guess what we learned with? The so called "evil" and "mind rotting" comic books!
My older sister was a teachers dream, straight A's, and just loved school, to the point she would be miserable when the end of the school year approached, and sit around in a funk all summer. She went to summer school every year she could, even though the place was a furnace when it was 80 degrees out, let alone at 90+.
Here I come along, getting the same teachers that she had about 1/2 the time. To say I was different was putting it mildly. I was bored to death in school, and I was easily distracted. If a train went by, I was watching it. If a neat car went by, I was watching it. I would read the entire book assigned the first night, and usually forget most of it by test time. It all depended on what the book was about. There were some I had to force myself to read and that was hell. I would fall asleep most of the time. One sleeping pill I had to suffer through twice was "Catcher In The Rye". If you liked it, well, ok, IMO, it's just a waste of paper.
All I heard was "Your sister didn't..." The teachers constantly compared us, and it got very old very quicky. I could spend hours messing with old radios, model cars, model trains, etc, but that 6 hours of school every day? Torture. I did what I needed to to get through it, nothing more. When I started college, taking night classes, I didn't get sick much at all (Except for a case of the flu that lasted forever) and felt GOOD, since for the first time in years, I was able to get some decent sleep. Grades improved to mostly A's, even in the classes I hated, like Calculus. And I didn't fall asleep anymore!
I guess what I'm trying to say is all kids are different, and have different talents. A friend of mine still has trouble reading very well. School was a nightmare for him, flunked the 3rd grade, almsot flunked 5th and 6th, and it took him going to summer school two years to barely get out of HS. He's not stupid in any way, but his reading is pitiful. I have to read stuff to him all the time if we go to a radio show, or train show. If he can't see what's inside a box, he can't read the label well enough to know what's supposed to be inside. Him trying to read a map is kind of funny, he turns the thing around and around and usually gives up. He can't put the name of a street and the map together. The first time he came over here, he had to call me twice. I finally went and had him follow me home.
Today, he's a successful commercial artist, makes 3 times what my sister and I make, and is happily married and a new grandfather. You've probably seen something he's done, like brochures and ads, his stuff turns up all over the place. His one daughter had a milder version of the same problems he had, the other one is like my sister, she's about to get her masters at the age of 22. Kids are different, always have been. Don't blame everything on games/TV.
