Winding down

Finally, I settle down.  1:30 a.m. and I'm starting to actually feel like bed.  Night owl tendencies, coupled with insomnia, compounded with a strange new anxiety thing I'm blaming on my new migraine med and sleep is earned not fallen into.

Anxiety seems to be flooded around lately here though.   Just before we traveled south for the class reunion Sonny Boy had what I would loosely describe as a panic attack one evening.  Seems it all stemmed from viewing a few minutes of a silly computer game at school.  I talked him down from that event but he has since viewed the game and reimagined his fears again.  This game has suddenly turned my almost 12 year old into a kid who is scared of the dark.  Not just disliking a dark room and prefers a little night light, but full on needs a bright light.  More than a couple of times in the last few weeks I've woken up to his bedroom light flipped on  and it never being turned back off until I get up to do it myself.   I had to broker a regular treaty of Versailles the other night to convince him it was better to keep the closet light on instead of the hall light.   Next week he is excited to go on a scout camp out, he will be in a tent with another boy roughly his age and I certainly worry.  While I know the creatures from the video game are make believe, and his rational brain does too, I certainly don't want him to have a full blown panic attack without a parent there and there won't be the handy thing of a light switch in a tent.

The game that fired up Sonny boy's imagination does sound creepy.  I haven't checked it, but Hubby has.  It frankly sounds pretty benign, not really even something I would ban him from playing but I guess it hits the right nerve with him.  How do you know though?  I have a common sense thing, I'm pretty sure it's not a good idea to let him watch Nightmare on Elm Street, or play some realistic army shooting game but to shield him from all questionable media is impossible and or extreme.

These are new questions for this generation of parents.  The good Lord knows if my Mom didn't want me to see something she simply didn't let me see it at home.  If I didn't have a friend with permissive parents it didn't happen.  Now if I say I don't want to see /play a game the next time he is near a kid with a tablet all bets are off and the lights are on in the middle of the night.

Well I'm finally really groggy, I'm off to bed.