If it weren't so tragic, I would have been amused by the June 22 front-page article about the proposal to classify video game addiction as a disability/mental illness.

We all know what that means. If this idea is in fact implemented, gamers everywhere will get the choice parking spaces. Mothers will be able to leave the workforce in droves to stay home with their protege, living off disability for their children's "illness," even encouraging limitless playing.

If tobacco companies are culpable for lung cancer; gun companies, sued for the trigger-happy zealot; and parents who serve alcohol to those under the legal drinking age, charged with murder when an underage person leaves their home and gets in a car wreck, why wouldn't there be some obvious accountability here?

The toy companies, the advertisers and especially the electric company all contribute greatly to the widespread mental illness.

But there are solutions. Let me share a few.

Well-meaning friends and relatives used to give my kids video games and media. Running the car back and forth over the games causes them to lose their allure and lowering the games slowly into a bucket of hardening cement puts a damper on things.

My "ex" left me years ago with eight kids under 16, six of them boys. They refused my boundaries, ripped my schedules down and exhibited a tendency toward this illness, so I had to do what I had to do.

First, all video game systems were sent into exile; the computer came to its end a short time later.

We haven't had cable or regular five-channel TV in years.

They may say they hate you now, but years later, when they haven't committed suicide, they will thank you and appreciate it.

My 21-year-old son used to hate me. He runs a men's home in East Liberty, Pittsburgh City Outreach, with the exact rules I raised him with.

Get the big picture; don't let your kids live for the thrill of the moment.

You won't regret it.

A great man, Brother Andrew/God's Smuggler, wrote, "Either a man must be challenged or he'll need to be entertained."

According to the article in question, America is entertaining its children to death. Pull the breaker switch.