As a case study in why I'm an uncle and not a parent, I present a five-hour sequence with the following players (ages approximate):
Ty (3)
K (5)
T (5)
E (7)
P (7)
L (11)
T approaches me at the dinner table. "Let's play video games!" he says urgently, and multiple times, until I proceed to follow him upstairs to our bedroom that houses PlayStation 2 and three games I brought along - soccer, football, and basketball.
T and I lie down on the bed and start setting up a soccer game.
Moments before kickoff, E walks in and asks to play. I should note here that my uncling style is like that of a restaurant host: I comply with every request, in the sequence in which it's made, unless the requestor has left the premises when their turn arrives. Since T requested to play soccer, and not specifically to play soccer with me, I hand my controller to E. At this point T requests that I play with him and not E, so I register it accordingly... and declare that I'll rejoin to play with him after half time (which E protests as "unfair.")
As a teammate of T, E proceeds to berate T and the rest of her team as England quickly pushes ahead 3-0. Actually, I think that given T's age he does remarkably well considering that E spends most of her time causing her player to boot the ball out of bounds, to the other team, or to drift about the field aimlessly (including an inexplicable goalie sprint for the sideline, allowing an empty-net goal that would probably have cost her her life during a real-life home game).
Midway through the half, T loses interest and wanders off. K enters and requests to play. K is E's younger sister, and although she is actually pretty skilled with a controller when she wants to be, she almost never wants to be (I'll leave it to the child psychologists, then, to explain why she wanted to play in the first place). England is delighted, and E is not. Eventually E tries to seize K's controller, which fails. I guess soccer riots aren't limited to Europe.
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