[OT] Ben Stein and Evercrack

[BryonD]

BTW, thank you

You are welcome.

Thank you though. If more people would give the level of effort it takes to get their children to this point, a lot of the political debates would go away.

You have made his life a lot better, your life better, and everyone else's lives just a tiny bit better.

So the thanks really goes to you.

 

[jaerdaph]

You are welcome.

Thank you though. If more people would give the level of effort it takes to get their children to this point, a lot of the political debates would go away.

You have made his life a lot better, your life better, and everyone else's lives just a tiny bit better.

So the thanks really goes to you.

And I am sure you will do the same, if you aren't already doing it now

 

[BryonD]

This is starting to get a bit overblown, isn't it?

My intention was never to prove anything, merely to express my OPINION that Ben Stein's choice (effectively, HIS opinion) was wrong. Happy?

Absolutely.

I disagree with you, but as long as Ben is free to do it his way and I am free to do it mine and nobody gets called a fascist (without proof), I don't care what your opinion is.

 

[BryonD]

And I am sure you will do the same, if you aren't already doing it now

My daughter is only 4. So I still have the proof ahead of me.

So far, we are very happy.

 

[jaerdaph]

Absolutely.

I disagree with you, but as long as Ben is free to do it his way and I am free to do it mine and nobody gets called a fascist (without proof), I don't care what your opinion is.

Sounds good to me

[THREAD HIJACK]

So Byron, tell me a little about gaming interests. What RPGs do you play, what settings, that sort of thing.

 

[jaerdaph]

My daughter is only 4. So I still have the proof ahead of me.

So far, we are very happy.

Excellent

I always wondered what it would be like to raise a daughter. There are definitely some differences from raising boys, or so my father tells me.

 

[BryonD]

Sounds good to me

[THREAD HIJACK]

So Byron, tell me a little about gaming interests. What RPGs do you play, what settings, that sort of thing.

I used to play 1e, then 2e. Decided I did not like 2e (all that much). Found GURPS, fell in love with GURPS. Played lots and lots of GURPS. Fantasy, Supers, Cyberpunk, whatever we could think of.

Living under the shadow of Stone Mountain here in Georgia, a friend of mine went to this little company called White Wolf that was just putting out some weird new game called Vampire. He got me a bunch of books and a t-shirt (that I still wear sometimes) and I started playing that.

Then I just stopped. Not sure why, but I did not really play for several years.

Then, in December 1999, on a lark I put Dungeons and Dragons into Yahoo or Google or whatever. I found some links about a "3rd edition" and some Eric Noah guy. (Actually found that other guy first, the playtester that had a page, I know he posts a little bit still) Anyway, suddenly it all came back.

The more I learned about 3E the more I liked it. To me it is the best of some of the GURPS elements that 2e lacked, while having the high heroics stuff that GURPS does not do as well.

Since Oct 2000 I have played about 2 to 3 times a month. Officially 1/week, but we miss about 25% of the scheduled times.

I am the obsessive type. I get my money's worth out of a lot of game material just by reading it. I DM and my home brew world has lots of house rules that never get used because they are wonky little things I think of just goofing around.

 

[gregweller]

Personally, I side with the kid. If he wants to play Everquest, then he should play Everquest. There's an obvious culture war going on between the kid and his father. At one point in the interview, the father says something about how wonderful a house he has, and what a good neighborhood he's in, and the kid should be out playing in the fresh air, etc. To me that's nothing more than a certain value system that he's trying to impose on his son. My parents had cultural values that they tried to impose on me in the late 60s and I rejected them. This just seems to be a variation on a theme. I've always been of the opinion that it's one of the duties of teenagers to contest their parent's value system. Ben Stein's attitude doesn't surprise me since he was one of Nixon's speechwriters. It seems like the old culture wars are still being fought.

 

[Wolf72]

outside of the classroom I think the only time I have used Fascist or communist was when I was yelling (to myself) at the mo-ron who didn't get far enough out in the turn lane to actually turn when the light was about change ... they just sat there waiting for a seeminlgly endless stream of traffic to die down ...

or the ninny who keeps passing me in the left hand lane!

 

[Fast Learner]

A bad parent wouldn't have stopped him from playing something that he obviously wasn't equipped to handle. How do you handle this sort of thing with your kids?

My 16-year old daughter plays EverQuest. She definitely became addicted to it (when she was 14), forsaking pretty much everything to play EQ, and like Ben Stein's kid, had a form of withdrawal when she wasn't allowed to play (like when she was grounded, for example).

I approached it the way I believe a responsible parent should (at least as a first resort). I (further) taught her about priorities, about adventure in real life, about time management, and about addiction. We hashed it out a lot, including quite a few unpleasant arguments. We got some counseling. I put up with her not liking me, her being sullen, and her thinking I was dead wrong.

Today she plays EQ sometimes, as a bit of entertainment. She revived her non-EQ social life and goes out with friends. Our relationship is even stronger for the difficulty, and my daughter is better prepared for the future.

What would my daughter have learned about addiction if I had simply sent her away to a place where she couldn't play EQ? Heck, what would she have learned about it if I simply took away her computer?

While it's obviously guesswork, how will Ben Stein's kid handle a future addiction situation? Did he learn self-control, or was he simply shielded from things that are addictive?

It's the job of parents to teach their children to be good adults. Part of that job is extremely unpleasant. As a single dad, I always get to be the bad guy, but I know full well that being the occasional (well reasoned, understanding, and loving) bad guy is well worth it.

So yeah, I think Ben Stein is a lousy parent, at least from the facts we have. If he couldn't go through the whole thing himself due to time constraints (which, frankly, is BS in my opinion since I run my own company and still manage to parent), then I could understand and approve of relying almost exclusively on a third party in the form of counseling and what have you.

But to send your kid off for years? Yeah, bad parenting.