Laser Tag
Berkeley Parents Network >
Advice >
School-aged Kids > Laser Tag
May 2011
Does anyone know of a laser-tag place around here? My son
has told me he would LOVE more than anything to have a laser
tag party for his upcoming 10th birthday, but I don't seem
to find one in a reasonable distance to our home (in
Oakland) when I look on line. Any ideas? Karen
My son had a birthday party at Q-zar in Concord. Boy heaven
(though you'll need aspirin). Parents can carpool and you
can hang out in the Starbucks down the street. Ann
We've done 3 birthday parties at Q-zar in Walnut Creek.
It's worked really well. We don't have much money, so I
never did an official party there, which is expensive.
Instead, we just invited 4-5 kids and bought them each a 3
hour pass. They disappear inside, played about a zillion
games of laser tag, and came out occasionally for a drink of
water. They play against whoever comes, which worked out
fine -- that way they can all be on one team. They don't let
you bring in food as I recall, so we just fed them before
hand, and then went home for cake. My husband and I sat at
the one table they have and graded papers (we're teachers).
Easy!
laser lover
Our 13 year old son had his birthday party at Qzar in
Concord. That is a ways for you, but we were happy with it.
--Zap!
Feb 2011
My son has his heart set on a laser tag party for his 11th
birthday. He really wants to do it outdoors with trees. Has
anyone done this? Any recommendations? Thanks in advance.
Party Planner
I only know of indoor laser tag - there is a Q-Zar in
Concord. If they want paintball, I can recommend Paintball
Jungle in American Canyon - visit their website kathy
July 1999
My 10 year old son's summer day camp is planning an outing to a laser
tag facility & I was wondering if other parents have problems with
this activity. I've called the facility & was told that the object
of laser tag is to "zap" members of an opposing team. Each team
member wears a vest, carries a "phaser" (essentially a laser gun) & is
given 6 "lives." When their vest registers "hits" they loose a life.
When they have lost all 6 lives they must be "recharged." "Techno"
music is played, there are obstacles to hide behind & the children
reportedly love it! Am I being too fussy when I object to promoting
an activity that, I believe, teaches our youth to fantasize about
shooting one another? What do other parents think?
Have you played it yourself? Try it! It's fun! My boys persuaded me to play
laser tag at Santa Cruz Boardwalk a while back. I had a great time, though I
was a rotten teammate because of my poor middle-aged reflexes. Thanks to me,
my family got creamed by a couple of 3rd graders teamed up with two giggling
teenage girls in platform sandals. Dave Barry (humor columnist for the
Miami Herald) wrote a hilarious account of playing laser tag with his
teenage son. It's in "Dave Barry is from Mars and Venus" (highly recommended
if you like that sort of thing.)
I know that many parents worry about their sons playing war games, and fear
that it will promote warlike tendencies. I do not believe this is so, and it
has not been my experience, growing up with a brother and raising two boys,
now teenagers. Boys seem to really need to play these cat-and-mouse games.
They enjoy running around in a pack of boys, weilding weapons or weapon-like
objects (sticks, swords, cardboard tubes, you name it). I do not see any
harm in this. On the other hand, I have known kids who were strictly
forbidden by their parents to do any of these activities. Sometimes they
are fine with that, but sometimes they become obsessed with the things they
are not allowed to have. One kid would visit our house and have no interest
in any other activities besides non-stop water gun play, because he was not
allowed to have water guns at home. My kids quickly became bored with his
single-mindedness, and went off to do other things while he continued to run
around by himself waving the water gun.
So, I think you don't need to worry about your son playing laser tag, and
furthermore, if he likes it, you should have a family outing sometime so you
can try it yourself. It is not my cup of tea - I would rather be gardening.
But when I try something that my kids enjoy, be it laser tag, or rap music,
or TV shows & movies, I am showing them that I respect their opinions and
their preferences, and they are more open to trying things *I* like. I think
this teaches them about tolerance and respect for people who are not like
they are. I always give them my opinion, which they are free to disagree
with (and they often do). But they also ask my opinion about things ("Mom -
look at this video game - isn't this cool?") So, I have some clout, plus,
I get first-hand knowledge about them and their world. And every once
in a while, they even introduce me to something that I really like, that
I wouldn't have known about otherwise.
-- Ginger
I think your uneasiness is well-founded. This seems a case of life
imitating a game designer's notion of what is fun. The children, in this
game, become animations. This is very different from a spontaneously
child-organized game where "dying" is a feature. (For example, as in my
son and his friends pretending that they have been killed by a natrual
disaster, or even a monster, but then recovering through the help of
friends or somehow achieving some kind of remdemption.) Children find
many things fun, and our role as parents is to figure out what's good for
them and what is not. Lately, we US parents have not been doing a very good
job, I think.
i never allowed my boys to have toy guns when they were growing up
(although they'd make guns out of anything: legos and lincoln logs
were popular materials). later i did allow water guns on hot days.
they were older when laser tag centers showed up, and i took them to a
few. it's a lot of fun! the down side is the rudeness of some of the
kids, which you may find if you're there with people not from your
group (hopefully not from kids within your group!). some will push in
front of the line to get recharged, or run (no running is allowed) and
wind up crashing into others. when we played with just our group, it
was lots of positive fun.
The social psychology research shows that there are strong
"foot-in-the-door" effects where taking a small step in one direction
makes one much more likely to take further steps in that direction
than would otherwise be the case.
There's no reason to think that laser tag would be exempt from this.
In a similar vein, all the research shows beyond the shadow of a doubt
that "taking out one's aggressions" only makes one feel better temporarily,
while *increasing* aggression in the long term. There is a ton of research
on this that you can find on MELVYL on the PsycInfo database.
Furthermore, I've seen an article by a self-described former "kill-ologist"
who used to work for the US Army, who basically described how giving soldiers
regular target practice with bullseyes didn't overcome people's basic
aversion to killing others, so that when they were actually presented with
an "enemy" they often didn't shoot or missed on purpose.
The Army learned that in order to break down people's inhibitions and
get them to actually shoot other people, you train them by giving them
realistic human-shaped targets in target practice,
which vastly increased the Army's "efficiency".
There is a big problem I have with Laser Tag. I don't believe you
should ever, EVER point a gun, even a toy gun, at anyone. If my son decides
to do some hunting when he becomes an adult, that's his business, but I do
want him to understand that you should never, in the interest of safety,
ever point any kind of gun at anyone. Issues of violence aside, this is a
basic safety issue here and I think the firearms owners out there would
agree it's not a good habit to point guns --real or toy -- at people,
period. Ever.
I find your discomfort with the laser tag game quite understandable,
which surprises me, since I've gradually come to feel that pretend gun and
shooting play with water guns or invisible guns gets taken a little too
seriously by adults, too literally. We don't try to understand the
things that might be driving it, like feeling small and vulnerable and
powerless, and working out for oneself how to imagine oneself big and
competent. My daughter constantly sports a magic wand with powers now,
and has an imaginary sister "as tall as the sky". Her preschool settings
have always strongly forbidden gun play, and I think the wand and sister
are her ways of addressing similar needs. Better? Maybe or maybe not,
but possibly culturally unavailable to little boys. And they don't let
her work on issues around life and death very well.
So why does the laser tag bother me? Well, I vaguely remember reading
something of Bateson's many years ago, in which he talked about young
animals play fighting. What interested him, was that play fighting
implied simultaneously sending the message "This is a bite." and the message
"This is not a bite.", and the paradox inherent in that implied a higher
order system of symbolic communication. It seems to me that what many parents
and kids miss, in forbidding all gun play, is just how complex such play
is, and the many sorts of things that might be being worked out in it.
On the other hand, I think the thing that disturbs me about this laser tag
game is that, in it, the "This is not a bite" component essential to
play has become weak, perhaps dangerously weak. The kids aim at one another,
and their shots actually land, by lighting up the vest or whatever. In
turn, this means that, unlike with invisible or stick guns, or water
guns, the victim has no choice about whether to be "dead" or not. Moreover,
in such a formalized game setting, their is no room for the play to morph
from the very narrow shooting/killing thing into other games or types of
play, as such things always do in the younger crowd. Thus, in many ways,
rather than (open, negotiable) play, it starts to seem like training, hence
scary.
I know, the Atlanta shootings don't have anything directly to do with
the discussion the other week on laser tag, but in light of the
Atlanta news, the Columbine High news, and the earlier discussion
on playing with guns, may I offer this short excerpt from a
Robert F. Kennedy speech, April 5, 1968.
"...we seemingly tolerate a rising level of violence that ignores our
common humanity and our claims to civilization alike. We calmly
accept newspaper reports of civilian slaughter... We glorify
killing on movie and television screens and call it entertainment.
We make it easy for men of all shades of sanity to acquire whatever
weapons and ammunition they desire..."
The full speech,
On the Mindless Menace of Violence, can be found at:
http://www.rfkmemorial.org/about/april5_1968.htm
Thanks, I appreciate this forum as we consider how to best raise our
children and keep them safe and loved in this society.
I'm late with this message because we were on vacation, but I couldn't
resist my 2 cents' worth re laser tag. We got an invitation to a birthday
party at a laser tag place, and my son and I decided he wouldn't go. This
was right after Columbine. I told the inviting parent why we weren't
attending. Some parents told me that they let their kids go to the party
because the kids had been to laser tag before and said it was "fun." My
response was that I don't WANT my kid thinking that shooting other people is
fun.
this page was last updated: Apr 10, 2012
The opinions and statements expressed on this website
are those of parents who subscribe to the
Berkeley Parents Network.
Please see
Disclaimer & Usage for
information about using content on this website.
Copyright © 1996-2013 Berkeley Parents Network