Clash of Clans as an Extension of Cabin Fever-Fuelled Sibling Rivalry

There are three children in our family and among that trio is a pair of 11 year-olds — identical twin boys. They may be indistinguishable in appearance (at least to those who don’t know them), but their personalities couldn’t be more different. And they’ve reached that stage of sibling rivalry that I had forgotten about from my days at home with my brothers. It’s extreme, it’s loud, it’s very active and it’s driving me a little crazy. Especially in the deep of winter when the Polar Vortex refuses to go somewhere else and as a result, they’re largely trapped indoors.

Want to see what I mean? Just have a look at the log from Clash of Clans — a game I joined in on as something I could play with them. Now that they use me as target practice in Halo, a casual game I can play on my iPad that’s more strategic than FPS and that run on its own for hours at a time has some appeal. Plus it kind of looks like WarCraft: Orcs and Humans.

But the boys quickly imported that boisterous, energetic, head-scratching mania into the game. I can’t keep it straight. In the course of just four hours, Jon had joined our clan twice, been promoted by his brother, demoted once and kicked out of the clan twice. That’s a lot of politics. And it’s gone on like that for days weeks.

The Clash of the Clans experiment hasn’t really turned out the way I expected, quickly morphing from a game we play together into a virtual battleground where the boys torment each other then make up to become best pals, over and over. With me stepping in to separate them and force everyone to virtually make up when things get out of hand.

Did I mention this winter is feeling very long, very cold and very snowy?

There have been four snow days already (or is it five?), those extra days off from school that do wonders for a work from home parent’s productivity. We have indoor soccer to burn off energy once a week and we’re going to try to get some tubing in at the ski hill, but there’s not a whole lot of relief in sight until spring. In the meantime, there’s hourly fighting over whose turn it is on the Xbox, chasing the dogs around the house, tormenting their sister, having crazy laughing competitions, arm punching endurance tests, playing “awesome” music like “What Does The Fox Say?” repeatedly at high volume, and Clash of Clans bickering to look forward to. And with them sharing a room (beside ours — that was well planned), the shenanigans sometimes go on until I fall asleep from exhaustion.

Makes me realize what my parents had to deal with when they had three bored boys to deal with, although we played hockey which helped to get rid of some of that energy.

I still wouldn’t trade it for anything, but really, this is costing me — and apparently the currency is white hair…

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