Why I let my son, 10, play Grand Theft Auto

Please read before @ing me - I have a real reason for doing this ...

The first time my son discovered Grand Theft Auto, he was about five years old. I’d left the Playstation running in the lounge, and was down the hallway doing dad stuff. Can’t remember what. Maybe it was the washing. Snore.

Anyway, when I returned, he’d managed to grab the Playstation controller, load up Grand Theft Auto V, get into a car and drive it around the fictional city of Los Santos for a bit. Not a bad effort for a five-year-old whose fingers barely fit around the controller.

But, when I walked into the room, things were getting serious. He’d managed to cause an accident by hitting a police car, and in Grand Theft Auto V, that’s a major no-no: he was getting arrested at gunpoint.

It was a scene of pure bedlam. He was jumping up and down on the couch in excitement, an expression of pure joy spread across his face. He was pointing at the screen and yelling at me, words tumbling out of him in the wrong order.

A little context. My son is 10 years old now, and he’s been obsessed with the police for almost all of his life. He loves everything about them. He builds police Lego police station sets with multiple jails to house all his crooks.

His bike is red and blue, and he often returns from rides around the local neighbourhood with reports of poor driving and bad parking and pretend tickets he would have issued if only he could.

He’s got a police hat, vest and badge, and delights in dressing up as an officer and policing his family. Yesterday, he tried to charge me $100 for swearing at the cat.

His imitation police siren is so brutally loud I swear he’s given me hearing damage. He’s currently campaigning for flashing lights to go on his bike. And he’s got an arresting hold so good I struggle to escape from it.

This doesn’t seem to be some childhood obsession like most kids. At one point, we took him to a police expo in West Auckland, and he presented the first cop he could find with a crumpled piece of paper containing a list of number plates of drivers he believed were speeding.

At another, we got so exasperated at all the police questions we called in a favour of a friend and set him up on a date with a real-life detective. It’s true. Here he is, sitting in the front seat of a police car with him, and a list of the questions he asked …

So, back to Grand Theft Auto. A while back, he must have seen me playing it one night and it sparked a barrage of questions. “Can you drive anywhere in the city?” Yes. “Can you drive any car you want to?” Yep. “Can you even drive a police car?” Also yes. But you have to steal it first.

After weeks of requests, I gave in and let him have a proper, sanctioned, go at it himself. So, every now and then, as a treat, he gets to boot up Grand Theft Auto V, jump in a car, and drive around Los Santos. He doesn’t do the missions, he doesn’t engage with any of the game’s unsavoury characters, and he certainly doesn’t get to use their arsenal of weapons.

I sit right next to him with a watchful eye in case anything happens, but it rarely does.

Honestly, he must be the safest Grand Theft Auto player the world has ever seen. He never crashes into another car, stops at all the red lights, and is extremely courteous to other drivers. Every now and then, he finds an empty police car, jumps in and uses it to police Los Santos. He pulls cars over for minor infractions and pretends to give them a ticket. He’ll yell things like, “Oh, you’re not getting away with that, mate,” at the TV, flick on his police lights, and start chasing.

Basically, he uses GTA V like a police career simulation, and it blows his mind every single time.

Does letting my 10-year-old son play GTA V make me a bad dad? Probably. It’s R18, and he’s only 10. But if it stops yet another question about police regulatory systems being aimed my way, or halts yet another insult about a minor parking infringement that I made, or saves me another $100 for swearing at the cat, I’ll take it.

Because living with an obsessive wanna-be mini-cop determined to reach his ticket quota sure has its downsides.