How Minecraft taught me how to stop worrying and love the bomb

aka How I got over myself

How do I place a block?  How do I move forward?  How do I jump? What do I click to break a block? How do I hit? Damn, wrong button! Again!  What?!  I died?! Where’d that creeper come from?  How do I get to base? Does anyone need to eat?

As I started to play Minecraft, I asked these questions OVER and OVER and OVER and over…

You get the idea.

I felt so stupid. Why couldn’t I remember what did what? Why was it so hard? Would I EVER not die every three minutes? Would my fingers ever not trip over themselves? Would I ever stop being so helpless?

I hated this. I do NOT like being bad at anything. I do not like practicing.

If my son didn’t love it so much, I wouldn’t have stuck with it.  But he did love it, and he also loved playing with me.  He enjoyed being the expert. He loved teaching me and protecting me. And, most of the time, he was really patient about most things.

So, what happened?

Thankfully, I knew about Playlistening. This is where the kid gets to be the expert and the adult gets to fumble and fail. It is such a tremendous relief to kids when they see the experts in their lives have a hard time at something the kids themselves are good at. When he was little, this was easy because I could play with the physical things that kids are learning. One of the surest ways to make a toddler laugh is to see an adult trip over their feet. But as he grew older, my tendency to be quite serious would get in the way of playlistening. To be quite honest, I was scared of not being good at something, of not knowing how to do something, even in pretend. I didn’t really know how to play.

In Minecraft, I didn’t have to pretend I was bad at something. I was really bad at it. I wanted to keep playing, though, because it was important to me to connect with my son, and this was what he wanted to do.

So, I had a choice.

I could be a serious grump who got mad every time I messed something up or something was hard for me in the game. Or I could embrace that I was horrible at it and lighten up a bit.

If I was a grump, he didn’t want to play with me, and, to be honest, I didn’t want to play with me either!

So, I tried out celebrating being horrible. I did the thing that I wanted my kid to do, and adopted a Growth mindset. I made my goal to learn. To practice. To enjoy where I was. To stay in the game. To keep trying.

Honestly, this has changed my life.

I enjoy myself much more of the time now. The weight of perfectionism has lifted significantly. I’m not as afraid to take a risk and try something new. And, somehow, my 13 year old son still asks me to play. He’s still better than me, but now I can hold my own, and we have a really good time.