Swedish Dad Takes Gamer Kids To Warzone

Z00L00K sends this excerpt from The Local: A Swedish father has come under fire for taking his two sons on a trip to Israel, the West Bank and occupied Syria in order to teach them the reality of war. [Carl-Magnus Helgegren is] a journalist, university teacher, and proactive dad. And like so many other dads, Helgegren had to have the violent video-game conversation with his two sons, Frank and Leo, aged ten and 11 respectively. "We were sitting at the dinner table last autumn, and my kids started telling me about this game they wanted to play, the latest Call of Duty game, and told me about the guns and missions," Helgegren told The Local on Friday. So Helgegren struck a deal. The family would take a trip to a city impacted by real war. The boys would meet people affected, do interviews, and visit a refugee camp. And when they came back home, they would be free to play whatever games they chose.

Comments

Gettin All Up In Yo Biznis

[alphatel]

I love how people insist on commenting on what fathers or mothers do to teach their children about reality. If you did not hand them weapons or put them in the line of fire (keep in mind in some countries even that is perfectly acceptable for a 12 year old), then mind your own freekin beeswax. Why is this even a /. story?

Side note? I would do the same with my kids if I actually got up off my ass and stopped typing on computers for 10 minutes. Sad.

Re:Gettin All Up In Yo Biznis

[WinterSolstice]

Great dad, in my opinion. My kids grew up involved in hunting, fishing, and shooting sports - but a trip to a refugee camp would probably have cured them of the FPS BS faster than anything.

Fortunately, they were never really into videogames.

Re:Gettin All Up In Yo Biznis

[Austerity Empowers]

Why would this cure anyone of FPS BS? What correlation is there between FPS and real war? Who plays an FPS because they wanted to go to war, but didn't like travel?

I don't mind shooting up some virtual people, I want to be as far away from real war as I possibly can be. You can like, die there. And I hear that's not the worst possible outcome by far. Down here in Texas the number of people with missing limbs and purple heart license plates is staggering, especially considering what wars we're in aren't really that large scale.

Kids are going to grow up and say "Yeah, Dad is kind of a stick in the mud. We wanted to CoD:BLOps on a new XBox, and he took us to the West Bank and showed us decapitated people. We just went over to friend's houses to play games after that."

Re:Gettin All Up In Yo Biznis

[pitchpipe]

Would you do it if they were reading comic books about war? Watching movies? Watching 50s movies with John Wayne about war? Reading novels about war? Playing war in the yard? If they started playing cops and robbers in the back yard with the neighbor kids, is it time to haul them off to a Scared Straight session at a prison, to impress upon them the harsh realities of a life of crime?

I think that every American should have to take a trip to the war zone to see what our tax dollars go to supporting.

This whole story is a tale of over-reaction that only seemed to have occurred, because "oh my god, video games!".

Or maybe it's just a father trying to raise his children to be good humans. Nah!

Wanting to expose your children to realities beyond those as depicted by popular media is a thoughtful thing to do. Not so much when it's a swift over-reaction to "OMG VIDEO GAMES!".

How do you know it was an over reaction? Were you there when they were discussing it? Maybe they're just a really thoughtful family. Also, what about the children who are already in the middle of the war zone? I don't see anyone wanting to try to mitigate that.

And, really, the truth seems more to be "freelance journalist does a freelance journalist thing and uses his kids as fodder for more freelance journalism". What do you figure the odds are he'd be doing this and documenting it if, say, he were a flight mechanic or a plumber and there weren't some other benefit besides that to his children?

A plumber or flight mechanic going there with their kids? Maybe. Documenting it? Doubtful, as they generally tend to not make documentaries.

I like how you stated it as "uses his kids as fodder." I'd put it more as "Family man sees opportunities to teach his children to become good stewards of the planet, and documents it to try to help others do the same."

I guess it all depends on your perspective.

Re:Gettin All Up In Yo Biznis

[Anonymous Coward]

I think you need to take a trip to real war to find out.

Re:Gettin All Up In Yo Biznis

[GameboyRMH]

I think these kids will avoid FPS games like the plague after this, but not because of any moral lesson, because there is almost none to be learned about FPSes here - since as you point out, FPSes are just games.

The real lesson will be "last time I asked dad for an FPS, he took us on an awful and depressing vacation of epic proportions, so I'm not going to touch them with a 30 foot pole now."

I couldn't go to a war zone...

[mrbcs]

So I showed my kids the multi part color documentary on world war two.
We discussed all kinds of issues:
Bombings, genocide, gas chambers, blockades, dictators.

They get it. They know war is horrible and they know what a game is.

It's called parenting. I applaud this guy's efforts.

Re:Fiction.

[Man On Pink Corner]

It's a grayer area than that. Blasting Nazis on Mars or whatever was one thing, but the US Department of Defense now throws millions of dollars at game developers, tasking them with making war look like just another extreme sport.

IMHO (and in the opinion of most credible researchers) even these games are not directly psychologically damaging to young people. But I don't like the message they are engineered to send. It sounds like this father has found a great way to give his kids an inside look at the game they're really being trained to play.

Re:Whatever games they chose??

[phantomfive]

You forgot to tell us to get off your lawn, grandpa. :)

You can stay on it, if you mow it. I'll pay you 50 cents. Then you gotta get off.

Re:Problem is

[rogoshen1]

I'm going to guess that the video game angle is kind of irrelevant. He took his kids from a very wealthy, stable country -- to go see how the other half live. They received first hand, a very real lesson in the way the world works.

Kudos to the dad.