Father Takes Kids To Israel To Teach About Real War

When Carl-Magnus Helgegren’s young sons revealed how obsessed with Call of Duty they’d become, he decided it was time to teach them some things about war. And have them taught by people in the business.

“They were talking to me like it was a cool game, and everybody else was playing it, and it had all these cool weapons.”, he told The Daily Dot. “Then I started asking them, ‘What kind of weapons are there?’ And they started telling me these, you know, brand name models of different automatic rifles.”

“And I was amazed that, ‘Oh my God, if I would show them the leaf of an oak [tree], they probably couldn’t tell me what tree it was, but if I showed them a silhouette of an MP5 Heckler and Koch they would tell me right away what it was.’ And that started worrying me.”

So he made a deal: if they wanted to keep playing Call of Duty, they had to learn more about real war. Having already planned a trip to Israel (he’d once lived in Palestine), Helgegren’s boys tagged along and met and spoke with a number of Israeli soldiers about what it was like to actually be shot at.

Now that they’re home in Sweden – and taking a bit of flak for his unorthodox teaching methods – Helgegren says, surprise, his sons aren’t playing Call of Duty anymore. Note that his trip took place in April, before the current conflict in Gaza.

Dad explains why he took his Call of Duty-obsessed kids to real war zone [Daily Dot]