Scrabble is a board game

In the newspaper on Monday there was a story about a Mum who was horrified when she gave her eight year old son a Nintendo DS Lite to play with - the game was 'Interactive Scrabble'. The words suggested by the computer were choice apparently. T*ts, f*ckers (!), sh*t, and toke were but a few of the offending nouns that so upset Mrs Tonya Carrington of Lincoln. (I confess to guffawing out loud when I read this story!)

Well Mrs Carrington of Lincoln - allow me to help you as  you clamber down from your ridiculously high horse - my suggestion to you would be to throw away the Nintendo DS Lite and spend some quality time with your son playing the real Scrabble board game - or Monopoly, or Mousetrap - or any of the hundreds of other board games that are available. You could teach him to paint, cook, sew, collect conkers, make Christmas decorations, read a book together - not just give him the latest electronic toy and let him amuse himself. Games are meant to be played as a family - in order to teach children how to play fairly and by the rules - and also to enable you to spend 'real' time with your son. You were probably too busy watching Jeremy Kyle :)

(Do I sound like an old fart?)