What Minecraft taught me about parenting

Guest post by author and journalist Cassie Werber

Photo by Klara Kulikova on Unsplash

Jenny here: Cassie offered to write this after we talked about her son’s experience with Minecraft. I promise: I did not ask her to say nice things about my book!

I started working with Jenny in October, launching and editing this blog and working across social media for The Disengaged Teen. I loved the project because, as a parent of young kids, I knew the teenage years would soon be upon me. Maybe working on the book would teach me things that would come in useful down the line?

What I discovered was that almost everything in the book is useful right now. Deeper conversations with Jenny confirmed that the content of the book, while angled towards parents and teachers of teens, is actually relevant from the age of about eight and potentially — as I’m discovering — even younger (my kids are 4 and 7.)

The biggest lesson I’ve learned so far has been about meeting my older child where he is, embracing his interests (his “sparks,” as Jenny and Rebecca would call them) and helping him run with them even, crucially, when they don’t align with mine. There’s one stark example of this, with which I am still struggling: Minecraft.

Where we started with Minecraft

I’m not a fan of computer games. I’ve rarely enjoyed playing them and have negative associations with them spanning my life. I felt left out by my two brothers, either side of me in age, bonding over Street Fighter II and Golden Eye. As a kid I played few, was bad at most, and decided early they were a waste of my time. I have no games on my phone now, and don’t love that my husband has a console. I’ve long worried that violent games like Grand Theft Auto normalize brutality, and that pretty much all games, when played by kids, suck them into an addictive world of casual violence and short-lived dopamine hits. When I see children playing games I see slumped shoulders, glassy eyes, twitching hands, and the opportunity lost to be doing anything else: playing outside, running, jumping, cooking, reading, caring for animals, interacting with friends.

Let’s just say, I was not an easy sell on Minecraft.

I agreed to let my son try the game for reasons that will be familiar to many parents: his friends are into it, and he was missing out on that particular social currency. His father likes games and computers, so we weren’t allies in opposing it. And I had heard from older parents (including The Disengaged Teen’s Rebecca Winthrop) that Minecraft is a different breed of game to many others: potentially creative, potentially social.

My son played a few hours and was hooked. He was able to chat to his friends about the game, and started choosing to use any TV time he previously had to either play instead of watching, or watch others playing Minecraft on kids’ YouTube, a choice that still boggles my mind, but which taught him a lot about the possibilities of the game’s world.

He started talking about Minecraft all the time. And I mean all. Every sentence began (and still begins): “Can I tell you something about Minecraft?” He asked me constantly what was better, emerald or diamond? How do you get a stone pickaxe? What can you do with netherite?

The questions drove me mad. They were proof to me that a computer game (pointless, insidiously violent) was doing exactly what I had dreaded: invading every corner of my son’s brain, pushing out other thoughts and interests. I bristled every time he asked me if he could play, which was all the time. After just a few days I snapped: He had to stop talking to me about Minecraft, I said, or I couldn’t let him play it any more.

It was at this point that I saw myself from the outside. I had read The Disengaged Teen and I realised, with sudden lucidity, that in a few years I would be begging my now-enthusiastic, bright-eyed child to speak to me at all; to tell me what mattered to him. Yes, I have a responsibility to protect my kids from harms, including online ones, and to help them resist peer pressure. But what I was doing right now was clearly letting my own disinterest in and hangups about gaming stamp on his genuine enthusiasm.

The lesson from the book rang loud in my ears: it doesn’t matter what they’re interested in so long as they’re interested.* That engagement, that spark of curiosity, is what will keep them hungry for learning and delighted by the chance to discover more. As Jenny and Rebecca’s research shows, that can easily spill over from the original interest, and into other things. Being interested in something — and having that interest encouraged, not shut down — breeds interest, and the desire to communicate that interest. This is the virtuous cycle of learning.

(Caveat: Maybe there are some interests that should ring alarm bells. But a lot of kids are into weird things. One mother I met described how her neurodivergent child wanted only to plan, draw, and discuss opposing armies attacking one another. So she plays and draws weaponry alongside him and maybe, sometimes, that gives her the space to talk about the need to mitigate real-world violence, and to help him gently understand the adult implications of war.)

Where we are now

I apologised to my son.

I told him I had been wrong: I did in fact want to hear about Minecraft. And not just sometimes. I wanted to hear everything he had to say about the game and its universe, the materials and how they behaved, his friends’ experiences, the fact that you can tame a wolf by killing a skeleton and offering it one of the bones (I think.) When we chat, I push back. (Why does he have to kill animals, for example? Because that’s how the game is. Yes, but why?)

We discussed and agreed some ground rules: He can play twice a week instead of watching television. He can’t spend money on or in the game, unless it’s his saved pocket money and we discuss it first. It still tugs my heart that if anyone were to ask what he loves the most he would probably say Minecraft; it annoys me that his 4-year-old sister now chats about zombies and creepers. But it hasn’t destroyed eithers’ ability to love other things, and has given them a lot of fodder for imaginary play as well as the thrill of going to see the Minecraft movie as a family. It’s one more thing we talk about and which they love.

I had seen, when I snapped, my little boy try to change. He bit back the urge to say what was on his mind to me, and saved it up to tell his dad. When a thought about Minecraft popped into his head, he tried—without really understanding why—to stay silent.

I will not to repeat that (though I’ll probably fail), whether he becomes interested in planes or sea creatures, mathematics or cooking or World of Warcraft. I’ll push back where I’m certain I need to: on social media, on toxic masculinity, on porn, on smartphones. But I won’t shut him down again. I won’t refuse to hear. I’ll meet him where he is and if I can, I’ll help him keep nurturing those sparks.

*And it’s not harming them or others.