Help my child is a gamer!

How Parents Can Support their Gamers Whole Health

Professional Experience Article

Mom just let me play for 1 more hour, please, Jeremy said. This statement become part of the daily argument between my son Jeremy and I. Jeremy, is among many other things a “Gamer”.

Like many Gamers he spends quite a bit of time playing on his PC. According to recent studies “Tweens (ages 8 to 12) spend 55 minutes per day playing computer or console games, and 34 minutes playing mobile games.” The amount of time Jeremy spends on his PC on average is about 5 hours a week. Many parents are extremely concerned about the toll this could take on their child’s mental health and for good reason.

My husband and I worried however, not only about his mental health, but also his physical, social, and overall well-being, his “whole health”. We worried because we noticed several changes in Jeremy since he became a “Gamer” Our Jeremy a 13year-old, 8th grade student in NJ started his Gaming Career about 3 Years ago It began with the Nintendo switch, then PlayStation, XBOX and now PC He did have a game console as well and often played on his XBOX, but the PC quickly became his favorite.

He no longer was interested in going to Barnes and Nobles with mom and dad to get the newest edition of Dork Diaries, Captain Underpants, and Dogman. Hanging out with his cousins seemed like more of a task then a fun time. As he continuously asked, “mom when are we going back home, my friends are waiting for me to log on my pc to play?” Friday Family movie night was out of the question, since this was the only night, he could play for a longer period time as it was not a school night. We worried we were losing Jeremy to an unknown, antisocial, sedentary world!

So, what did we did? I can first tell you this not a one size fits all. All children are different, and you will have to work as a family to find what works best.

Let me start by sharing what we tried to do that did not work for us:

Talking to him about how much we hated his new habit

Prohibiting him from playing

Forcing Jeremy to spend time with us

Trying to reason with him why gaming was bad for his health

These actions created an environment of hostility, anger, and lack of communication. It was the opposite of what we needed. We yearned desperately as a family to improve our communication skills to help Jeremy set healthy boundaries with his new interest. We quickly learned this was less about us putting our feet down as parents, giving our son ultimatums, playing the “no card”, and doing what we thought was best for Jeremy versus building what was best together.

After many failed attempts we changed our approach and found this is what did work:

First- Put yourself in your child’s/tween’s shoes! You once had a hobby, or many that you could not get enough of! Ask yourself, did your parents nagging, or yelling do anything to stop you, or did it simply make you want to play more? How did all the fighting caused by the nagging, make you feel, close to communicate or ready to talk?

Second- Listen - Instead of sharing with Jeremy the reasons why he should stop gaming, and how upset we were over the changes we noticed in him. We said: “Jeremy we are noticing you are growing and with that learning about new things and taking up hobbies. This is wonderful and we are so happy for you. Can you tell us what you like about gaming and why?” Again, just listen! We bit our tongues to whatever rebuttals formed in our minds about his new passion. We just listened.

Not to answer, not to respond, but to understand our son. To acknowledge his feelings, needs, wants and help him also reflect on his new interest. Usually, any new interest can be healthy if balanced well.

Next- Allow your child the right to self-determine- We then said: “This is great Jeremy; I know it has been hard for us to understand your new hobby We just want to make sure we can help you keep enjoying all the wonderful activities you like in a balanced and healthy way How about we create a plan together? Share with us how do you think we should work out this new interest, and create a schedule that works for you?”

We fleshed out how much time he was playing every day, how much time he was dedicating to school, his studies, eating, reading, his friends, family, sleeping, and disconnecting his mind from gaming.

He shared with us, what he believed would work, things that didn’t, and what he hoped to gain from this experience

Now all of this did not happen in one conversation. It occurred over time and slowly. We often had to prompt Jeremy, and patience was Key!! We also stopped taking away his game time, instead encouraged Jeremy to keep his own time, and would gently remind him, hey did u eat yet, or texted him over for a 10-minute break and snack. But maximized his game time to 1 hour per day on school days and 3 hours on Saturdays. Now keep in mind, every child/tween is different, and the American Academy of Pediatrics has suggested times allotted for children. We created and set times based on what we felt worked best for our tween and family.

We would say things like you are doing great at managing your time, we are so proud of you My husband created a family group chat, we affectionately labeled- The Pinks- (Pinks translated in Spanish for our last name Rosado). We shared interest, discussed family night and made sure to prompt Jeremy on what he wanted to do for family time and what time we should start.

This encouraged his participation, took into consideration his new interest and schedule We planned our social outings as a family, making sure to ask about everyone’s interest

The truth is this entire process was not at all easy. It truly required for us to think out of the box as parents. While we worked on equipping ourselves, about how gaming could potentially negatively affect Jeremy, we also developed strategies to help Jeremy build his own critical thinking skills on his newfound interest. We also became versed in the Gaming World to learn about game genres, safety measures, and the gaming community. This truly helped us to be able to speak with our son about his interest and have conversations about issues such as possible concerns with new games, e g , content/exposure to violence and nudity We were also able to just talk with our son about new games, have fun, and laugh Jeremy shared these experiences made him feel we truly cared about his interest and respected his decisions We learned that mental health involves a person’s whole health. To build and sustain our child’s mental health, we would have to learn to help him develop healthy habits, and skills he would need to use through out his whole life.

Written By: Martha Rordriguez, LCSW

Martha received her MSW from Yeshiva University. She has more than 18 years of experience in both private and public sectors She previously served as the Service Manager in Recovery at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, facilitating the delivery of mental health services, and Mental Health and Social Work Consultant for the Student Services Project at the University of South Florida Currently her role is with the New Jersey Department of Veterans Affairs