Sports and Betting and My First Grader, Oh My!

Hi there!

My name is Aria and I am the CTC Communications Director. I’m taking over the Parent to Parent blog for the month of October as a guest blogger. When I said yes to this guest blogging opportunity, I was unsure what to write about. I have two children - ages 7 & 3 - and while I had a few ideas, I decided to see where the winds of prevention would take me! Turns out, I didn’t have to wait that long for an idea…

In my house, we are BIG Philadelphia sports fans. On Sundays during the Fall, we have football on all day in our house (Go Birds!). As my 7 year old has gotten older, he has started to take more of an interest in sports and pays more attention to the games we watch. Last week, we were watching our favorite pregame show and he noticed that they were all talking about sports betting. I explained to him that many people do this and it is legal in the state of Pennsylvania. After that short conversation, he started to take notice of all the online sports betting commercials - and for good reason, as these commercials, highlighting various sports betting sites, seemed to flood our tv. 

He started to ask more questions and became even more curious about what the “games” were like on these apps. I again explained to him that these “games” are for adults and then he asks…well why are all these commercials on during the day when kids are going to watch? 

I couldn’t believe his insightfulness. We then discussed that any ad is targeting an audience and while most of these ads are targeting adults to play, they also are inadvertently targeting kids to play when they become of age. Thank goodness I remembered listening to an episode from our Parent to Parent podcast series about Youth Gaming & Gambling, which gives parents helpful information and even preventative steps. One thing they talked about was how gambling behaviors among youth can affect a kid’s brain similarly to substance use, and that gambling schemes are embedded into many video games. 

I know that this conversation is just one of many I will have with him on this topic but I was so glad that I was able to have an open and honest discussion with him and that I had information to pull from. In the prevention field, we know that the key to reaching our youth is many small conversations, like this one, slipped in the day to day - that is what helps our kids make healthy choices as they grow older. 

We would love to hear from you: What are things your kids see on TV or in movies that they bring up to you? Email me at awalerski@dtownctc.org. Happy fall!