My 12yo son with a PDD-NOS diagnosis and video games

[Sillyman433]

Hello all. Thank you for reading this.

Is my 12yo old son addicted to video games? I think he might be. He plays long hours, is going to sleep late, wants to play all day long. I know this might describe lots of kinds. But my son also is giving us a very hard time when we try to guide him. He wants to play with no interruptions, so when we tell him he's playing too much and needs to go to bed he becomes angry, and tells us to go away. Sometimes, after we had told him to stop playing several times in the lapse of a a couple hours, we have yelled at him, at he has had a crisis. He becomes obsessed with the though of us having interrupted him and tells us we are bad parents, keeps asking us why we had to stop him, sobs and groans, and is unable to sleep for hours. Sometimes he wakes up the next day and the crisis goes on for hours. This is really upsetting us, we really do not know how to deal with this. On one hand we know it is not healthy to play video games so much per day, sometimes he plays as much as 7 hours in a single day. On the other hand, we don't want him to suffer, and when he has a crisis he does really suffer. Is there any advice you could give us on how to deal with this situation?

 

[Isadoorian]

Welcome to the Forums! I hope you make new friends and enjoy your stay in the process!

Use the Parental Features on whatever game console it is; You can typically set a Timer:
Xbox One: https://beta.support.xbox.com/help/family-online-safety/online-safety/set-screen-time-limits

Playstation 4: How to manage Play Time controls

Nintendo Switch: Nintendo Support: How to Set Up or Adjust Nintendo Switch Parental Controls

Also try and get him into other Hobbies; I myself play Video Games lots, however I like reading and playing Magic the Gathering, for example.

 

[GadAbout]

He does sound addicted, to me. But he also sounds like he is being disrespectful to his parents. Maybe you need to lock up the game consoles for a month. It won't be enjoyable for any of you.

 

[Schism]

Gaming is a great way to escape from the pressures of real life. It can be advantageous in honing reaction & puzzle solving skills for example. With a healthy balance of real life. It can be very dangerous when it's one sided artificial reality & the two become blurred.

Games are designed to be addictive. Designed to make you want everything achieveable. Designed to make the developers money. Totally unrealistic.

He wants to play Minecraft? Chop trees for a 99 level? Take him to the woods & get him to chop 1 for real & build something.

Likes Shooter survival games? Go hard camping with the family. No wifi, no toilets, no heating, no immediate food. Take him fishing in winter.

Balance. He needs to learn reality vs leisure fantasy. It will also teach him a lot of life skills for the future & hopefully an appreciation of nature & his real environment. Have fun ☺

 

[Fino]

I'd say to take them away entirely. He'll flip out for a while but have to give up eventually. Then maybe he'll see what it's like to be a child.

 

[Iamnotarabot]

It depends heavely on the game , what game is he playing precisely?

When I was his age, ( still feel the same today honestly) when I started a game with a story I liked I felt the urge to finish it and it was an obsession, I talked with some friend about it and I was realy surprised to learn that they didnt feel this this much.

Try to limit him in healthy ways , as a kid who played too much I admit it was not so great overall.
But also try to take some time to learn about the games he play , what he likes about them etc...

Maybe he could earn some play time by doing productive things in the house etc...

 

[christopher.k]

this definitely sounds like an addiction or something like it I also used to have the same problem and the thing is that I just couldn't stop myself when id had enough and I would lose 4-5-6 hours easily despite getting burnt out after an hour or 2 because I've always had such poor self-restraint

I tried balancing it as has been suggested here but the urge to go into steam and fall back into whatever it was id fixated on was so strong it was like it had rammed a hook into my skin and just wouldn't pulling me so I eventually had to take the extreme measure of giving myself a full ban and deleting steam off my laptop.

so I think you should take a hard stance and give him a full ban until he can learn to cope without them.

though after ranting all that id also like to know if it is interfering with him learning life skills and if it's making him reclusive?.

 

[Voltaic]

Gaming is a great way to escape from the pressures of real life. It can be advantageous in honing reaction & puzzle solving skills for example. With a healthy balance of real life. It can be very dangerous when it's one sided artificial reality & the two become blurred.

Games are designed to be addictive. Designed to make you want everything achieveable. Designed to make the developers money. Totally unrealistic.

He wants to play Minecraft? Chop trees for a 99 level? Take him to the woods & get him to chop 1 for real & build something.

Likes Shooter survival games? Go hard camping with the family. No wifi, no toilets, no heating, no immediate food. Take him fishing in winter.

Balance. He needs to learn reality vs leisure fantasy. It will also teach him a lot of life skills for the future & hopefully an appreciation of nature & his real environment. Have fun ☺

I think schism is on point here. Video games have evolved beyond the simplicity of 90s arcade games to a point where for a lot of people, they are no longer just as simple as a game.

I played minecraft for a long time. A cousin brought me into the game pretty early on before it was largely popular. Spawning into the practically endless world, If I wanted to explore, it was as simple as walking where ever I like. If I wanted to build something of value to me, I had to put in the work to do so. If I felt lonely, I would jump on a server and build things I could never do by myself with others.

When I spawned into the real world, my life was regimented with school, activities, and societal expectations. If I wanted to explore, I was only allowed to walk on a 1 1/2 meter strip of concrete to avoid trespassing, or playing with the cars. If I wanted to build something of value, I would need money for materials, and be shunned from using any tool potentially dangerous to make the things I want. If I wanted to be with a large group of friends, the meet up would have to be scheduled and supervised.

Do you guys see what I am getting at? I think it is in part same point that schism was trying to make. Video games are offering an alternative to the things the real world is depriving people of. Often times, many important things such as achievement, social interaction, exploration, building, clear and meaningful rewards... the list goes on.

Is it that people are addicted to video games? I think people are addicted to human needs, that can only be readily met in video games.

 

[Yeshuasdaughter]

Lock up his video games. He will probably go nuts and throw a tantrum. But it's not his job to rule the roost.

Welcome to the beginning of adolescence. He will freak out and tell you he hates you many many times in the future. But of course he doesn't.

Stay firm, and do it from an attitude of love and compassion, and he'll grow up all right. The teen years are like the toddler years, attitude wise.

 

[Ken S.]

People are over protective of children these days. My father had me mowing the lawn by age 10 and I did my first break job on a 1961 Ford truck at age 11. Granted he was not the best father (not even close) but he did teach me a lot about the proper use of tools and put me in self defense classes at age six because I was a small child and other children liked to pick on me.
Children will test their boundaries and if they know they can get their way by having a blowout then they will use that to run all over you.