The Mighties

One of the things I quickly realized when I started staying home with the kids was the amount of sheer garbage readily available on their iPads. Call me naive, but I just assumed that my parental controls would filter it out. After all, Miss Bean the Rule Follower would not only turn off anything she found inappropriate but would bring it to me immediately. She’s just that type of kid. Bean had me convinced that I was a parenting ninja because she was obedient, articulate and emotionally mature. Sure, let’s have another kid – clearly, we are freaking amazing at this!

And then the boys came. They were wild. They were loud. They didn’t speak until well after 2 years old, just screamed like baby pterodactyls while you frantically tried to figure out what they wanted. They worked in tandem to get around any safety measures we’d put in place. Time outs didn’t work. Spanking didn’t work. One doctor suggested we do a “strong sit” with them during a tantrum, which is basically restraining them from hurting themselves. The first time I tried it with Noodle, he peed on my lap in retribution. Guess what? We were not parenting ninjas. Bean was just genetically predisposed to obedience, while her brothers were genetically predisposed to be Tasmanian devils.

So, when I became a stay-at-home mom, I realized quickly that my sons were watching stuff on YouTube that was not ok with me. I deleted apps and tightened their monitoring software and paid a whole lot more attention. And although they’ve always had their own lingo between the two of them, there was now a whole new layer involved – gamespeak and terms about characters they liked, etc. I didn’t even know who JoJo Siwa was. The boys were both horrified at my ignorance and determined to educate me.

One thing I just couldn’t figure out was this game they loved called Monster Legends. They were OBSESSED. They talked about it morning, noon and night. There’s a decent amount of reading required, so they’d bring me their iPads for help. I knew nothing about it and felt like my grandpa trying to program the VCR. So I did what any logical parent would do: I downloaded the game and decided to learn it myself so that I could at least understand what the boys were saying. Totally logical, right?

The game itself is pretty straightforward. You build habitats and fill them with monsters, then grown food to level them up. Each monster is based in one of several elements (earth, fire, etc), so you develop battle skills and breed various combinations to make new monsters. It’s not hard, just time consuming. But then I realized that there is a social aspect to this game – players join a team and can chat with each other. Teams battle each other and can chat with the opposition. And my boys were already in a team with strangers. Oh, helllll no. I didn’t think it was fair to make them delete the game altogether. So, clearly, the logical step was to start my own team and bring my kids in.

So now I’m a team leader in Monster Legends. And now my entire family (me, Melissa, Noodle, Roo and Bean) are all playing this damn addictive game and are all on the same team. Our team name is The Mighties and we’re currently warring against a team called Sweet Revenge. My player name is Mama Sarah and, basically, I’m now a six year old boy. Heaven help me. 🤦🏼‍♀️

You might think I’m making this up. Sadly, I’m not. See?