Eventually you will need to mourn, it's unavoidable. In Phase 2, you should think of nothing but tragic event. How can this help? Even though you forcefully prevented event from entering your conscious thoughts for first 21 days, your subconscious mind was grieving. Now you need to deal with it on a conscious level.

You will be able to grieve with less pain now because your subconscious mind has already dealt with it. You can't put tragedy behind you unless you deal with it on a conscious level. For next 21 days, force yourself to focus on tragic event.

If tragedy is a broken relationship, think about life you could have had if things worked out way you dreamed. If tragedy is death of a loved one, think about moments of your lives together. Focus entirely on how much that individual meant to you.

Phase 3: It's time to move forward. For next 21 days, think only of your future life and changes you will need to make. Plan your new life. What changes do you need to make to carry on under your new circumstances?

Unfortunately, painful events are part of life. Bad things happen, but life moves on. My plan doesn't let you totally avoid grief of a tragedy, and not letting yourself grieve would not be healthy anyway. I promise you, no matter what loss, in end, human spirit will always survive.

---------------------------------------------------------- Resource Box: Copyright(C)2004 Bucaro TecHelp. To learn how to maintain your computer and use it more effectively to design a Web site and make money on Web visit bucarotechelp.com To subscribe to Bucaro TecHelp Newsletter Send a blank email to subscribe@bucarotechelp.com ----------------------------------------------------------

And you can’t do this alone, no matter how much experience you have. So you begin to learn to play game with others. The game encourages this, with “friends lists” and built in “speed chat” menus consisting, for kids’ protection, of a limited number of phrases you can use. For example, you can invite your friends to help you defeat a building (or, if you prefer, you can just wait outside for others to show up.)

But it gets subtle. Just because someone is your friend (or wants to be) or happens to show up, doesn’t mean he or she has experience to defeat higher-level Cogs. You can check out someone’s gags when they are in range to help you decide whom to work with, but success depends not only on level and number of gags one has, but also on knowing how to use them in battle. You learn over time what players you want on your team to achieve success in particular situations. Sometimes, to be sure all of you survive, you have to reject players who ask to work with you on a certain task. One of things you can say through speed chat is “I think this is too risky for you.” Just as in real world, such advice is not always well-received, and game gives you opportunity to learn to deal with this.

In midst of any battle – players typically fight higher-level Cogs in groups of four – a player can choose, rather than to throw a gag at Cogs, to instead give his or her fellow players additional “laff points” (i.e. health). Doing this helps prevent them from “dying” and dropping out of battle. One skill typically gained from frequent play is knowing when to help your teammates versus when to attack Cogs. This is not trivial. One adult player described her first battle with ultra-high-level Cogs as “extremely nerve wracking,” and characterized strategies she had to employ to work successfully with other players as “the most emotional experience I’ve ever had in a game.” And this is version for kids!

And there is yet another way Toontown players learn there is value in cooperation. Some of tasks available to higher-level players allow them to earn jelly beans by helping out new players. When these experienced players see a Newbie fighting a Cog on street, they can join in and assist. When Cog is defeated, both experienced player and Newbie get rewarded game at their own level.

Is it Boring?

Still, while tasks at start of game involve defeating only one Cog at a time and tasks at higher levels require players to defeat hundreds of Cogs on their way to liberate bigger and bigger buildings, battles are very similar. “Isn’t that boring?” I asked one “addicted” player. “After all it’s basically same thing over and over – fighting Cogs.”

“I like going up levels,” she replied. And of course only way she can do this is by learning to cooperate well with real people, in real time – while sitting at her own computer.

I encourage readers of this article to try Toontown, both with your kids, and even on your own. (You can go to www.toontown.com to get started.) See how far you can get. If you happen to enjoy experience, you can go on to aforementioned “older players’” games, where enemies are fantasy monsters and buildings castles to storm, yet where principles of cooperation are basically same. If you actually get addicted to cooperative play, don’t blame me – these games are designed to reel you in.

But even if you don’t get hooked yourself – and more you are from “Digital Immigrant” generation less likely it is that you will – hopefully you will have learned this important and generally-overlooked lesson:

What keeps kids playing these games is not violence (that’s all fake and kids know it), but rather ability to work together with others to achieve more and more difficult goals.

Can you think of any skill more useful for children to spend their time learning? I can’t.