Do Kids Need This Crap (Pun Intended)??

The above picture is a poop emoji. For those who have never seen it before, it is part of our pop culture now. You can literally type “poop” in a text message and this emoji becomes an option for you to insert into your conversation.

I suppose I understand certain scenarios where this emoji would be what some people deem a necessity for their messages. I don’t think I have ever used it.

Poop. Let’s talk about it for a minute. We all do it. Animals do it. But does it need to be in a kid’s game? I really don’t think so. Let me explain.

Remember back in the day they had those digital pets that you were supposed to take care of? You have to feed it, give it water, put it to bed, etc…. I never had one, but many of my friends did. Personally, I don’t remember if you had to let your pet go to the bathroom. Maybe you did. If you did, however, I doubt they showed you the poop.

Today, I guess it doesn’t matter. Ella has a game on her kid Kindle Fire where you have a dog. You feed it, pet it, play with it, dress it up for pictures and such, and you let it outside. The first dog she had would find a batch of flowers and roll it them. Then it would dig a hole revealing something it had buried before.

I guess I should have expected that the dog would do its business out on the lawn. I was not surprised when the dog assumed the position to pee or poop, but when it left a pile of poop behind, I couldn’t believe it.

Ella was laughing and saying, “Daddy! That dog pooped!!” She found it to be hilarious. There it sat on her screen for like 5 minutes because I didn’t know what the next step was. I eventually figured out that the black doohickey at the bottom of the screen was actually a pooper scooper. Once you clean it up, you can make the dog continue to walk around the yard again.

It did bring a big silly laugh from Ella. Andrew laughed too because Ella was laughing so hard. Both of them laughing led to me laughing. I can only hope that when we eventually get a dog that this game will remind them of the importance of cleaning up after it!