A 3 year old's Addiction

There comes a point in everyone's life where you become obsessed with something. You know when you were a kid and everything had to be about your favorite TV show, Rainbow Brite? (I know this dates me, but I am willing to do so to make a point) You just had to watch that show, you wore your hair in pig tails with ribbons just to be like her and you absolutely had to have a Rainbow Brite birthday! Well okay, it may not necessarily be about Rainbow Brite, but any show or anything that you just could not get enough of, whether it was your favorite show, band, movie or even your crush. Everyone has had those moments of pure obsession. 

Well this obsession, addiction or whatever you want to call it started early for my youngest son Scott. Which makes me wonder, how many more things will he be obsessed with throughout his life? In order to understand his "addiction" you first have to understand something about our family. You see we are a gaming family, and yes I mean video games. We all play games, of course we all have our favorites, mine is any Call of Duty and Halo, my husbands is Skyrim or any Fallout. My children will play just about anything they can get their hands on. We play games with each other and against each other. In other words we strongly believe that the family that games together stays together!!

Now it is usually expected for a 12 and 11 year old to play video games, and even my 7 year old. And in most cases you can expect a 5 year old to at least play a DS, but when people find out that my 3 year old plays, and can actually handle the controls (properly), they are just blown away. Our kids might as well be born with a controller in their hands. He has been "playing" since he was 2. Now of course he was not always so good, but of course like wine, he get's better with age.

So, where does this addiction come in? Well let's just say that when I am so kindly woken up by my son in the morning, I can always tell how my day will go based on the first words out of his mouth. You see, most days my son wakes me up to, "mom, can I play my DS?" or "can I play XBOX?" If either of these are the first words out of his mouth in the morning, then I know I am in for a fight, especially if I say no. If I say no, it is the end of the world to my son, and he is not shy about letting you know just how upset he is with your decision. At first he cries a little, but then he decides to ask again, but now he begs, he sticks out his bottom lip, cocks his head just slightly down and looks up at you through those sad little eyes and says please. Instantly your heart melts and you want to give into him, but you know you can't because it is the principle. Besides, its only 7 am, even in a gaming family it is too early to play games. So of course you say no, again. Now my son loses it. He yells at you and demands to play games. He stomps his feet, balls his hands into fists, tells you that your mean and so on. 

After that, he asks to play games about every 2-3 minutes until we either give in or we can think of something better to do, which to him there are only two better things, shopping, and playing outside, and naturally us adults don't always want to do those things. So, as much as it pains me to say, we usually give in about an hour or two later, if he hasn't forgotten, but we always hold to hope that he will forget, of course he never does.

Who can say no to this face?