Dear LPG, 

Every child has a decade or so that shapes them, and I have no doubt that, despite it being a while ago for most of us parents of pensionable age, every mother and father remembers the part that they had to play in our children’s life-lesson-forming process and the challenges that we encountered on the way.  

Our children are all grown up now, and as so many of them have made us grandparents, we are now getting a bird' s-eye view of them as they battle with today’s version of that challenge.    Mine were young children of the 1980s when I thought parenthood was hard. When they were young, I did my best to give them everything available to their contemporaries, although I drew the line at toy guns. 

But computers came along, and all the children of that era were in at the birth of video games, which quickly turned from Tetris, which featured those little exploding squares, to PAC Man, in which the little balls travelled through a maze and often got destroyed along the way.

It was only a short time before games where characters destroyed their own kind became the norm, and we parents, more often than not, knew little about the technology. We were in an age where our ability to censor video games was minimal while our children got better at accessing them.  

Then there was Paintballing and Quasar, the paint-spattering and ultraviolet versions of the ‘shoot ‘em up’ games where people went to an environment specifically designed so that they could often find themselves eliminating their friends who, all too often, would become their opponents. 

The teenage versions of my children invited me along to have a go once.  I did not enjoy even pretending to be shot, and although there was no pain and it was just a case of getting up and on with the game, I had problems when it came down to aiming or firing at anyone else.

Now, they have become interested in a pursuit called airsoft, in which the infrared light and paintballs have become pellets, which I understand do hurt a bit when you get caught.  

They are both married, in their 40s with young families, and they have bought and keep the whole kit needed to occasionally go off for the day to pursue this sport(?): army combat fatigues, protective breastplates, hats, masks, gloves, boots, goggles, ammunition and so much more.  It also bothers me that they keep their replica guns hidden in their houses, and from what I have seen of them, they and the ammunition look pretty realistic to me.  They record the visuals with headcams – and even have radios, so their teams can talk to each other and alter their battle plans while in the field. 

My grown-up children and I are still very close, and the stories of pretend war are often shared even though I tell them I would rather not hear them.  I do my best not to react to it all, but when you are told that there are real tanks involved and one of them got in the way of one of your children (no matter how old that child is), you can’t help but pay attention and be a little worried. I asked them why they were so focused on playing war games, and they each told me that it is the ultimate escape from the monotony of work, home, and children, adding that it is a good exercise workout into the bargain.

As a young parent, I worked with a lady whose son was serving on HMS Sheffield when it sank during the Falklands War.  He survived, but I will never forget the anguish she went through during the days when she did not know.  I have to say that although it is only a game to them, I am getting a hint of what that time was like for that work colleague.

WP, Dulwich

We at LPG did our best to find an example of each game… 

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