Bloody Minecraft

My kids fight.  All the time.

I don’t know if it’s having three boys and one girl, or the dynamic of their personalities but rarely do a couple of hours go past without some sort of squabble.

I can deal with most parenting challenges but the fighting just does my weary head in. I have zero patience for it and nothing makes my blood boil more than my kids screaming at eachother. Instant pissed offness (totally a word).

It irritates me even more when it’s over something completely ridiculous. Like “I want that car, I had it before and then I went to the bathroom and he took it”. Even though at last count we have at least ninety four billion toy cars. It was that one they wanted.

Being a mother of four, I have learnt many parenting tactics and tricks to deal with these kinds of problems over the years.

So like any other excellent parent, what do I do when they start fighting?

I separate them, give them each an iPad and tell them if they scream again I’m putting them on the front lawn for a week.

I know, genius.

Anyway. Lately there has been a problem with my clever strategy.

MINECRAFT.

I hate it. It’s a creative iPad game where you build a shelter with all sorts of things so that when it gets dark in Minecraft land you have somewhere to go to protect you from animals.

Or something. I don’t know, I can’t really make sense of it and when I watch the kids playing it I just get all dizzy watching them move blocks around. Oh my god I am turning into an old person saying things like that aren’t I?

From what I can gather it’s a pretty harmless game in terms of violence and all that nasty internet stuff and I don’t have an issue with them playing it.

Except that my kids fight over it. BIG TIME.

So when they fight in the real world they get on their iPads for some time out from one another and then they fight in a virtual world too.

“MUUUUUUUMMMM, Charlie burnt down my house. I spent hours building it and he just came over and wrecked it and now I’m being chased by a bomb head”.

“Get away from me Rocco” Holly will scream into her iPad even though Luca is sitting at the end of the sofa talking into his iPad too. And his name isn’t Rocco.

It’s the most annoying thing ever. Even worse, they’ve given themselves fictional names so when they fight they don’t use their real name “Stephen, you smashed up my farm and it took me eight days to make and now a zombie is chasing me. I hate you”.

wtf?

It drives me insane  .. “Holly, why are you fighting over this, it’s not real. Do you understand that? IT’S NOT A REAL HOUSE and your name is not Emma”.

The way they can all be sitting in the same room yelling at each other into their iPads using different names over something that doesn’t exist, it really is the most bizarre thing to watch.

Sometimes I feel like I’m losing my mind and I wonder where I went wrong.

Then I remember I was still having punch ups with my brother when I was seventeen. I remember my tiny Mum trying to break us up with each of us trying to kick each other around her tiny frame. Thank god Minecraft wasn’t around then otherwise one of us might not be alive today.

But one thing I can tell you. If my kids are still fighting when they are seventeen I will be moving to Siberia. Jupiter even.

As for Minecraft. I want to set it on fire and throw it into the sea. Far far far away.