HealthyGamerGG - Video Games Made Me Repeat the 9th Grade

Episode Date: September 11, 2022

Dr. K dives into video game addiction, why you can't fix someone else's addiction, control, and more! Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/healthygamergg/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

So this is the hard thing for parents, is that as you start sharing responsibility, outcomes can get worse for your kid in the short term. If they're actually responsible, you got to let him stumble. And parents don't want to do that. So let's take a look at this post from a parent who's struggling to fix their son's gaming addiction. Because apparently their son is going to have to repeat the ninth grade. So heart goes out to them. This is a common struggle that parents deal with.

So let's try to understand what's going on here. My son is 15 years old and he is diagnosed with ADHD and autism. He spends a lot of his time playing World of Warcraft, which his dad also plays and pays for the game. I put a strict schedule for him daily, which includes homework first before screen time and gaming, and gaming is restricted to two hours per day until 8 p.m. when dinner is ready. And after which, he showers, brushes his teeth, and goes to bed at 9.30. Question number one, how much would you like to have this person as a mother if you were a gamer? Question number two, for those of you that are like, oh my God, this sounds awful.

How many of you don't want this kind of person as a mother, but with, your parents actually set firmer limits on you so that you are forced to develop good study habits, right? So we don't want this kind of person as a mother and yet oftentimes as gamers

we blame our parents for not being stricter on us for not giving us study hobbits, chat. Trying to get a 15-year-old to shower and brush his teeth is a daily struggle. I didn't think much of it until I've received complaints

from his teachers about him not engaging with the class, misbehaving, not doing his schoolwork, etc. I also received a call from the school stating that his grades are so bad that he's going to stay in the ninth grade next year. I immediately told my husband to cancel the subscription and uninstall all of the games on the family computer. I set it up so that he cannot install anything on it without my password. I've not seen the subscription on our joint account. Question number two, chat. How effective do you think

this is going to be? Mom, uninstall all the games. Cancel all the subscriptions. Fix the problem. I'm going to fix my son's gaming addiction, right? I did not realize until later that he circumvented the boundaries I placed on him by lying and saying he has no homework so he can get can game. His teachers mentioned by email that he had homework. He snuck our old laptop in his room to play in the middle of the night past bedtime and he has been cutting school to play the game in the library. I received a phone call later that day telling me he hasn't been in school. He was grounded immediately and I took away his switch iPhone and remove the keyboard and mouse for two weeks. and he is expected to be home right after school.

He usually gets home around three. And the punishment will be extended for another two weeks if he's not back by 3.30. Mom, cracking the whip. Oh my God, he has circumvented my rules. Let me impose further rules and more strict. For the most part, he complied. After realizing that he's going to repeat the ninth grade, the confiscation will be indefinite.

Who wants this as a mom? I enrolled him in summer school and told him that he will get his stuff back if he passed the summer school and have a minimum grade of C on all of his classes consistently. next year. Ever since I confiscated his games in the computer, he has been snapping at me and giving me and his father a bad attitude. When I tell him to do chores, he barely finished them and does it in the most passive-aggressive manner and half-assed. He's been getting into periodic temper tantrums and breaking things like a two-year-old. He's become extremely

disobedient. The last straw was when I found a 60-day subscription card in his room, which he used his allowance to pay for behind my back and sneaking into the library to play the game. and sneaking a laptop I've already hid into his bedroom to play. So much hiding. Mom hid the laptop. Kid hides the laptop. I've stopped giving him money and I've asked husband to do the same. I'm at my wits end with him and I have no idea what to do.

I've tried finding other activities for him to do, but everything but that stupid game bores him. Even Netflix doesn't satisfy him. He is very easily bored and when he's bored he gets incredibly obnoxious. I've spoken with his doctors who increase his Adderall dose. Good. stimulants and gave him additional medication, but I'm only seeing a small difference. Parents, help. Definitely, this person needs help. Before we start getting mad at mom, let's understand thing number one,

which is that some of y'all had a mom like this who restricted your gaming and took things away, and y'all hated them for it. And when you fought, you won. You snuck things behind their back. So do we hate moms like this? While we're in the situation, yes. But you know what also happens? we blame moms like this for not being hard enough. Oh, mom, I was 15, you should have been more strict, you should have helped me study, you should have made me study. So parents are in a really tricky situation because we fight and chafe against them

when they take things away from us. But if we get what we want, we blame the parents anyway for not being strict enough. It's really challenging. So what's the crux of the problem? How do we understand the situation from both the parents' perspective and the kids' perspective?

And how do we start moving forward in this way? Thankfully, we have a lot of experience with this. We've been very successful at helping parents and their kids rebuild their relationship and overcome unhealthy video game habits. So the first thing, we're going to break this down for you. There are three things to really understand here. The most important thing, how do I fix my son's gaming addiction? I'll say it now. I will say it again.

No one can fix an addiction for someone else. You cannot cure an addiction. You cannot make someone else attain sobriety. Addiction has to be conquered by the person. So no matter how hard I want to, I can't cure my child of my child's gaming addiction, alcohol addiction, heroin addiction. There's a lot of stuff that I can do to facilitate sobriety. There's a lot of stuff that I can do to support sobriety, but I can't fix sobriety in someone else.

And the basic problem that we've seen, and this is our approach, is that right now, it's parent versus child. They're both trying to outmaneuver each other. They're not on the same team. They're not working together. And so as long as your child is trying to circumvent you, this is going to happen. Circumvented boundaries. Circumvented boundaries.

So what parents try to do is they try to control, control, control, control, control. And what kids try to do is circumvent, circumvent, circumvent, circumvent. You can't force someone into being sober. Or even if you can, it'll only be for a little while. And the second they get an opportunity, they're going to circumvent you. This is a war that you can't win as a parent. So then the question kind of becomes, okay, well, like, if I can't win the war, how on earth do I get my kid to stop playing video games? And that's where you've got to start

by having conversations with them about like how the gaming is affecting them. Right. So this is where like there's an antagonistic relationship here. So the next thing that I would recommend to this parent is like talk to your child. What I'm seeing is a lot of limits being imposed. I'm seeing a lot of punishment, which makes sense. We're not saying that boundaries and punishments don't have a time and a place. But right now, y'all are fighting against each other. And any kind of punishment that you exhibit, they're going to be disobedient, they're going to be passive aggressive, and they're going to try to circumvent it at every chance. How on earth are you ever going to win? And what does winning mean? Squashing your child into a compliance? That's going to just

deal with, you're more, you squash your child, the more passive aggressive stuff you're going to see, the more emotions you're going to see, the more dysregulation you're going to see, and the more that you try to find other things for him. And in his head, does he even want to listen? So you're trying to to help and he's swatting your help away because the relationship is antagonistic. I can guarantee you that there are other things that don't bore him. But right now, I want you all to understand this. Like, let's think about this, like a chess game. If mom is taking my games away and trying to find me another activity that makes it less that I can enjoy, if I agree that this activity is something I enjoy, what does that mean about mom's behavior? Ah, that justifies mom's behavior. That moves the game

one step further away from me. Because if I'm having fun doing other stuff, then mom will never give me the game back. So even though I'm enjoying it, I'm actually lying to mom. I'm not even giving it a chance. This cannot work because the kid and the parent are not on the same team. You can cure a lot of things in other people. You can pull a bullet out of someone and patch them up and then you're done. They don't need to do anything. When it comes to an addiction doesn't work. Other thing is oftentimes parents like, they try, right? They're like, they tried talking to the doctor. The doctor up the dose, but that doesn't fix the problem. So what do you do in this situation? Start with conversation. So like, if you want your kid to brush his teeth, does a 15-year-old who plays World

of Warcraft every day understand why it's important to shower and brush their teeth every day. So, like, talk to them about it, right? And this is where it's important to, like, ask the kid what they want. It's like, this is a 15-year-old son. Chances are he's in puberty. And so, like, this is a conversation about, hey, like, you know, how do you feel about, let's assume cisgender heteronormative for a moment? But how do you feel about dating? Would you want to date someone. What's your understanding of like what kind of people, either boys or girls that you're attracted to, like what would they want in their partner? What happens if you don't brush your teeth every day? Do you want to have a nice smile when you start dating? Right. And this is where like all

kinds of things can come up. Oh, I don't feel confident about dating. I feel so embarrassed. Then so you can ask them, okay, that sounds really challenging. Like, do you think that if your smile was good versus bad? Would that make it easier or harder for you to deal with that embarrassment? They're like, oh, it would be so much harder if I couldn't smile. Like, I'd want a nice smile. Okay, so, like, what are you, like, how can we help you brush your teeth every day? Because that's how we get a nice smile. This is the kind of thing where some of y'all may be reading this and being like,

like, ADHD, autism, well, person doesn't know hygiene. Like, maybe that's true. But my point is that, like, whether that's true or not, like, you have to work with your kid to come up with goals that they are supporting you instead of fighting you. That's number one. Talk to your kid. So other questions to ask. I know it sounds kind of weird, but when you've got to,

a 15-year-old, what's the point of school? I'm not hearing that the child actually understands what the point of school is. And we kind of assume, right? And this is where things get kind of tricky, especially if you've got a kid who's neurodivergent, is sometimes we have to explain things to them or have conversations with them, things that we never had to be taught ourselves, right? So talk to the kid about what's the point of school. And this is where like we've got to talk to the kid, like because it's 15, right? So we've got to start talking about things like the future, the scary place called the future. What do you want your future to be like? Do you want to go to college. Do you want to get a job? Do you want to be financially independent? What do you want to do? Is there a job

that you think would be fun? What's your understanding of like why we go to school? Next question, what's the point of games? What's so fun about this game and what's so boring about these other things? Why do we play games? What are they for? Right? And that's where it's like kind of weird, but like I just enjoy it. Yeah, but what is it for? So start engaging your child in these kinds of conversations. Now is it going to be this simple? No, there are all kinds of other things we have to do next. But this is where, like, there's not a shared understanding of, like, what the goal is and why we're striving for it. And as long as your kid doesn't think that addiction is a problem and has no problem with failing out of the ninth grade and stuff like that, which he does, right? So we have evidence of that.

He starts to listen a little bit more when he realizes he has to repeat the ninth grade. How do you feel about repeating the ninth grade? I feel terrible. How many times do you want to do it? You want to repeat the ninth grade once, twice, three times? What's the first? What's the second? What's your goal? You tell me. And how much do you want me to help you not repeat the ninth grade twice? Okay. So I'm willing to help. But this is what I need from you. This is what I'm going to do and this is what you're going to do. So now we get to another problem. When I'm trying to fix my son's gaming addiction, who has who's bearing the responsibility of fixing the addiction? Who has no responsibility? My kid. When I have all the responsibility and my kid has none of the responsibility,

we're going to get situations like this. You're going to circumventant in line because because I'm the one who's responsible. It's my job to make sure he passes. So he can do whatever he wants to, but at the end of the day, I'm the one who's responsible. So I have to crack down more and more and more and more and more. To make sure the kid, because that's probably what's happened. Because when I was 14, right? So mom is struggling. So who's responsible for showering and brushing teeth? Mom is, not kid. That's why I struggle. When it doesn't get done, this is how you know who's responsible. When it doesn't get done, who stresses over it. That's the person who has responsibility. So if you want to fix this, you have to have shared responsibility. Then the parent naturally asks how the F do I get my kid to take responsibility.

And that's where this is where the parent has done a couple of good things, right? So I would even start not by punitive, but creating a situation where gaming opens up, depending on whether the kid does what they're supposed to do. It's not two hours per day until dinner is ready, after which you shower, et cetera, et cetera. It's like, okay, once you tell me what the targets are. We agree on what the targets are. It's going to be like C average in summer school. and once you hit those targets, you can play as much as you want.

As long as you're hitting the target, you can play as much as you want. As long as you're going to bed on time, waking up on time, doing your chores and doing your schoolwork, you can play as much as you want. Or you can play two hours or four hours or whatever amount of restriction you want to do. But the key thing is that we want to incentivize the right behavior. Got to brush your teeth every day, got to shower every day. And then this is the kind of thing where what I would do is, okay, if you brush your teeth and shower and are in bed by 930, you get to play games tomorrow.

You get the two hours tomorrow. This is the other big thing that parents don't realize. There's a lot of simple stuff in terms of boundaries that never occurs to them. And one is that one day is the unit under which all privileges and punishments need to happen. You can actually reward behavior today. You can give people the reward tomorrow. And the cool thing is when you start giving the reward tomorrow, it actually helps someone with ADHD because it encourages their brain to plan into the future and restrict their impulses today.

Now, this is what's really challenging about doing. this as a parent is when you sort of say like, okay, no games tomorrow, if they don't brush their teeth and, you know, shower, whatever, go to bed by 930. And then like what happens when they don't do that, right? Like as a parent, your instinct is to go in and yell at them. We're not going to yell at them. You just pop your head in at 930. By the way, I notice you haven't shower, have it brushed. No games tomorrow. If you're not in bed by 10, it's lights out time. If you want to, you can have half an hour to shower and brush now. At 10 o'clock, it's going to be lights out. Your choice. So this is where parents really struggle is they don't want to surrender that control. They don't want to surrender that responsibility. And you don't

want to surrender it, which means your kid doesn't share that responsibility, which means the whole cycle continues. So this is the hard thing for parents is that as you start sharing responsibility, outcomes can get worse for your kid in the short term. If they're actually responsible, you got to let him stumble. And parents don't want to do that. And then they wind up in this kind of situation where the parent is freaking out, making sure all the work gets done, making sure that you did your homework and studied for your test because we don't want to get an F. And then as you take the responsibility, the kid gives it up. But I think sharing responsibility is very important. And setting gaming as rewards for good behavior as opposed to you did bad, therefore I'm going

to punish you. Because this sort of means that the default is entitlement to the game. And as long as you don't screw up, I'll let go of the punishment. There's no reward. It's all about punishment and circumventing. And when you've got a punishing kind of system instead of a reward kind of system, what you're going to do is you're going to get people who circumvent the boundaries to avoid punishment. So have conversations. Number one. Number two, Two, reward-based systems. Share responsibility. But sharing responsibility means that you have to be able to tolerate a bad outcome. Actually, the first thing that we talked about, even more important than all the others, is that you can't fix an addiction all on your own. You need your son's help. The last thing that we've got to be very careful about, this is a very important tip. Gotta get Dad on board. He spends a lot of his time playing World of Warcraft, which his dad also plays and pays for the game. I'm not hearing dad anywhere in this conversation. Like what the F? Dad needs to talk to him about like, if, if he's Dad is the one playing wow and playing for the subscription. Like, dad needs to sit down and have a conversation with the son.

Hey, here's when it's acceptable to play wow. And here's when it's unacceptable to play wow. If the dad is the one who plays the game and, like, introduce the game and pays for the game, like, dad needs to be a part of the conversation. This devastating for so many parents. When one parent is like, hey, this gaming is a problem, the other parent is like, ah, they'll grow out of it. Or you've got divorced situations where dad lets unrestricted gaming or mom lets unrestricted gaming. kid knows how to manipulate mom into like ignoring things or mom is so loving and affectionate and like doesn't set appropriate boundaries.

And then kid gets to play none. Then what's happened to the parents are tearing their hair out? Because the two weeks when the kid is with me, I'm very, very strict. Make sure they study every day. And the two weeks they're with the other parent, they let it all go to hell. And the kid is still skating by with seas because they don't study at all when they're at the other parents' house. So both parents need to be on the same page, whether y'all are divorced or not divorced.

whoever is in a caretaker role in the parents, in the kid's life, needs to be on the same page. How do I fix my son's gaming addiction by having a conversation with your husband and making sure he is trying to do the same? By having a conversation with your son and make sure he is trying to do the same. Not saying that people should get divorced, but it's like, this is overcoming addiction is hard enough when everyone is on the same team, infinitely harder when people are actively sabotaging your effort. So it's tough.

Like this whole dynamic between parents and kids is getting worse. We want to blame the parents. and even as gamers, let's be honest, we sometimes blame them unfairly. Mom, I'm so mad at you for taking the game away. And then five years later, mom, why did you give me the game? It's your fault that I don't have study habits

and I'm failing out of college, right? Parents can't win. So how do we approach this? It starts off by recognizing you can't fix an addiction for another human being. You got to get them on board. You cannot fix the addiction in spite of your son. If your son is trying to circumvent,

be passive, aggressive, disobedient, and emotionally dysregulated, at every turn. Start with conversation. Use gaming as a reward. Enroll dad. Enroll also therapists and psychiatrists because there's way more than this is the other thing. When it comes to especially autism and ADHD, there's a lot of useful treatment that is not medication. It's behavioral treatment. It's organizational treatment. It's prioritization treatment. A good therapist who works with someone who's on the spectrum or someone who has ADHD will teach kids, will strengthen your child's executive skills. The goal is not

restriction or compliance, the goal is to help your child grow into an adult where they take responsibility and start managing their own problems. Sometimes they need some explicit education in how to do that. And sometimes parents need some explicit education in how to deal with this. Why are so many parents struggling with this? It's because most of what we learn as parents, we get taught automatically by our parents in terms of our household. Do you pray together before you sit down and eat? What is dinner time like? How does laundry happen? What? How does laundry happen? How do you do chores? All the stuff we get taught automatically by our parents.

How do you manage emotions? How do you manage rewards? What are the expectations around going to school, going to college? All that gets baked in because our parents taught it to us. Most of what we learn about parenting is automatic. The thing is, 40 years ago, games didn't exist. And so parents of this generation struggling, overwhelmed because this wasn't a part of my education.

Because it's completely new. And as it's completely new, like we don't know how to set boundaries. around games. Like, I never had to set boundaries around, like, my parents never had to set boundaries around how much TV I watched, because when I was growing up, there were cartoons on Saturday morning, and there was crap like the news after 5 p.m., which I didn't want to watch anyway. They didn't have to set limits on me because there was only a limited amount of cartoons I could watch. And so the amount of limit setting and boundary setting that parents have to do now is way higher than they've ever had to do. Parents have never had, like, you know, my parents didn't have

to deal with, well, I mean, I guess in a sense they did, billion dollar corporations trying to addict me to stuff, which in that case is probably cigarettes, right? But now it's like, it's games. So it's challenging. But it starts with can't do it all on your own. Got to get your kids help. Starts with conversations. Sharing responsibility, letting your child stumble. And hopefully also includes the support of other caretakers as well as treatment professionals. You don't want to just throw medication at the problem. A lot of this stuff is behavioral. So teaching your kid how to respond, how to communicate, all that kind of stuff they can learn in therapy. So good luck, parents, because y'all are going to need it, because we're a tough bunch.

How early can you start talking to your kids about it? I started at the age of two. So I'll give you all a couple of quick tips. What do I do to help my kids? So I'll give you all, how early can you start with kids? I started at the age of two. So here's what I taught my kids. My goal is to teach restraint instead of restriction.

So I'll ask my kids things. Like, when you watch the first 15 minutes, how excited are you? you to watch. And after you've been watching an hour, how much fun is it? Right? During the first 15 minutes, let's pause for a second. Are you having a lot of fun? And one hour in, let's pause for a second. Are you having a lot of fun? Two hours, are you having a lot of fun? This necessitates that I let them watch something for two hours. And then they'll say, no, I'm actually not having as much fun. And sometimes I'll even ask them, do you want to stop watching after an hour or do you want to keep going? And as you raise awareness, kids will start to realize, after you've been

watching for two hours, are you happy? Are you cranky? Because a kid can realize, oh, oh, I'm cranky. It's just about helping them become aware, asking them after we spend a weekend away from screens, did you have a lot of fun this weekend? Did you miss screen time? When I ask you what you want to do, why do you say screen time first, even though you say you had more fun this weekend? How does that work? Why do you want screens?

What do they do for you? And we'll see, right? So like kids are doing okay for now, but maybe five years from now, they'll both be addicted. This will be terrible strategy. But generally speaking, it works really well. We've got to equip our children with understanding. Does it mean they get to watch as much as they want to? No. But when I do let them watch, I encourage them to think about what the impact of it is. And sometimes, like, we'll do that, right? We'll be like, okay, what do you want to do tonight? You want to watch a movie? Fine. But then I'll set limits on them for the next day. I'll say, we can watch a movie and you can stay up late, but you are not allowed to be cranky tomorrow. And then when they're cranky tomorrow, we'll have a conversation about it. Why are you cranky? Just because you're cranky doesn't mean that everyone else needs to do things differently. So unless you can regulate your emotions from this point forward, we're not going to watch movies before we're. we go to sleep and stay up too late in the future.

It's your choice. You show me that you can regulate the behavior and we'll continue the reward. And if they're able to regulate, then I'll reward them. Close that loop with communication. Say, hey, you did a really good job regulating. Next weekend, we can try watching a movie again. And I want to see if you can regulate next time or even avoid the crankiness entirely. It's all about closing that loop and having a lot of communication.

That's the thing is like, parents, we don't realize, first of all, we don't have time. Secondly, it's like hard to constantly be talking to your kids about computer usage. or screen usage. But that's what it takes. I started at two, but the questions get more sophisticated the older that they get. Kids are capable of restraint. Absolutely. Kids are very capable of restraint. Doubly so, if you actually teach them how to restrain yourself. Right. So I'll teach my kids how to meditate. We'll teach them restraint. Restraint can be taught. For those of you that are confused by that, you all should definitely check out Dr. Kay's Guide to ADHD and doing stuff because we'll teach you how to do stuff, which is a skill that you can learn. Most of us just stumble through it. Guide isn't out.

So you can't check it out yet. Your kids meditate when they want to. At what age, I started teaching them something like meditation before they were a year old and even under two. So there are some focusing practices which you can teach a child like even before they're two. I'll give them like, for example, I'll get a cup of warm water and I'll get a cup of cold water. So here's our, I guess, our meditation for the day, which is going to be how do you teach a less than two year old to focus their mind? So first you get their energy out, right? So like you do something physical.

So they're not like so fidgety. and stuff. Then you get a cup of warm water and you get a cup of cold water. And then you tell them, put your hand in this cup and put your hand in this cup and what is it, what do you feel? And even a two-year-old can be like, this is warm, this is cold. And they'll like, you'll see them as you put your hands in the water. They'll like be wiggling around and as their hands go in the water, they'll like stop. And they'll start to experiment. Let's start playing with it. And they'll focus their mind. Or you give them different things to smell. So another thing that'll do is I'll tell my kid, close your eyes. Let's do smelling game. And then we'll give them different things to

smell. And then like the kid will be still. You can say, okay, you can, you can hold it yourself. So daddy's hand is open. Grab the thing and you can smell it yourself. They'll grab it. Okay, touch it. Tell me what you feel. So early on for kids, kids, if you want a child to meditate, the key thing to understand is that children are very sensory creatures, right? So like early on in our brains, we're getting a ton of sensory stimuli. We're very attuned to our senses. So kids are very sensitive to things like sounds, right? They don't sleep if it's too noisy. They're very sensitive to things like taste. They're exploratory, they'll put objects in their mouth when they're very young because they want to feel things. They want to touch everything. Don't touch that. It's poop. One year old doesn't care. They want to

touch everything. They want to taste everything. They want to see everything. They want to smell everything. So encourage that. Use those senses. So if you want to use some kind of sensory experience, you put some structure around it with enough sensory variety. So I'll give them like five different things to smell. And then what happens when they, when they smell is this is how we are going to teach you also we teach this in the guide. But Bratiyahara is sensory withdrawal or sensory restraint. So what we do in those kinds of situations is like we're using our sense organs to focus our mind. So when we chant a mantra, when we're using prayer beads, when we're doing oam chanting, when we're noticing the breath, we're using some kind of sensory organ, like our proprioception

and noticing the breath, to focus our mind. And you can do the same thing with a kid. In some ways, it's even easier with a kid. They're more sensory dependence. So you can ask them to listen to something, right? They won't appreciate music, but like you can ask them, okay, I'm going to play a sound, like a jungle sound, like a jungle track for five minutes. And I want you to pay attention, tell me how many different animals you hear. Anytime you hear an animal, you let me know. And then for five minutes, their mind is focused on listening. Their attention is focused.

And it's curious, right? Oh, there's a tiger. And it's really great. Like, they can learn very early. And then you can move more to formal meditation, which is what I'm teaching now. So now my kids are a little older. That's how you teach kids to meditate.