The boy experienced the extreme emotions of the thrill of accomplishment and the agony of big mistakes. Unfortunately, the big mistake happened after the thrill of accomplishment and that’s the foot his school day got off on.
Did I mention this happened over a game? Clash of Clans to be precise.
It all started with a seemingly innocent offer. I told the boy he could check on his village and play for 15 minutes this morning. The nice thing about the game is you don’t need to sit in front of it for hours and hours. A few minutes spent at a time can be sufficient to keep your position in the game moving steadily forward.
He started playing and immediately went on a raid for his Clan. He won the raid easily and earned a bunch of stars for his Clan. This is a status marker within the game and he was rewarded with 50 gems for his efforts. This was his thrill of accomplishment moment.
I headed up to take a shower. Several minutes later, the Wife appeared and said the boy was hysterical because something had happened to his gems. She had brought the iPod, as a safety precaution, and in the background I could hear the wailing and lamentations of the boy.
First, a word about gems in CoC.
Arguably, they are the most precious resource in the game. They can be earned, in small amounts, through completing different achievements in the game. They can also be purchased via actual money on a credit card. The game is a timer based game. Everything takes time to be built and upgraded. Gems allow the timers to be shortcut, so if a defensive unit typically takes a day to build, it can be built immediately for some number of gems. Gems also are the only way to get builders, arguably the most important character in the game. The builders are used to create a village and upgrade its parts as a player advances in level. Everyone starts with 2 builders, but another can be had for 500 gems. Having more builders means being able to advance more quickly through the game.
Alright, back to the boy.
My own play had convinced the boy to start working towards getting a 3rd builder. Prior to my participation in the game, he had been spending his gems to complete building projects more quickly. Now, he was saving them for a 3rd builder.
The boy mistakenly traded 150 of his gems for gold this morning. I’m not entirely sure of the sequence, but it was a bungle on his part that cost him all of the bonus gems he’d gotten earlier and then some.
This being a completely unimportant video game and all, the boy was completely inconsolable. His initial reaction was tears. Lots and lots of tears. And screaming too, as well as not a little bit of wailing. There was probably gnashing of teeth. You know, the full gamut.
This crisis occurred 15 minutes before school, which is not nearly enough to to allow the strong emotions associated with such a momentous event to run their course. He was still in tears when I finally loaded them into the car and he was stewing in a nasty fury when he got out of the car to head into the school.
Hoping to try and break his fever, I told him “Your friends won’t be impressed when you get in there. Don’t make things worse by making another mistake that’s more costly than the one you made in a game.”
I’ve been in his shoes before. Both when the trigger was something completely stupid like a video game and when it’s been something far more significant. I’ve had that response of fury at myself for making the mistake. It’s the confusion created as the mind tries to come to grips with the fact that it’s a mistake that cannot be undone. I know the “self-immolation” that goes on as you try to figure out how such a thing could have come to pass. I also know that all the consoling in the world will not convince him that the game is not that important. Simply put, it was important to him and his emotions need to run their course.
Thus, the tact the Wife and I took was to merely to try and contain him and to keep him from doing something he would find even more regrettable. Thankfully, the lass knew better than to try and chip in and she politely kept her distance from her distraught brother. We didn’t try to tell him it was no big deal, though we did try to emphasize it was only a game. For the most part, considering the raging emotions he was dealing with, he allowed better judgement to prevail, the occasional door slam not withstanding.
The temptation to repurchase the gems for him is strong. They are not that expensive (~$5 for 250 if memory serves). But that would undermine the larger lessons available. Being a parent sometimes requires us to fix things. Other times, it requires a life lesson to play out and we can just hope that he learns the right things from it.