Tag: family meeting

Gaming – How to put kids in control

~ Sarolta ~ 1 Comment

I’m worried, just like many other parents, that my kids miss out on important things when they choose to play computer games instead of pursuing other activities. When I see them play tennis or make music together, I feel happy and proud, but when I see them with their phones or controllers, I feel compelled to instantly assign them a task. But I know I can’t do that, and I don’t want to control them anyway. I want them to be in control instead.

That being said, we all – parents of teens – know that we can’t just let go of the control. It will take a long learning process before you can be certain that they are ready.

To define what it means to be in control when it comes to gaming we carried out an experiment for a period of one week: I asked them to write down every time they play a game why they started to play and how it feels to play. And, in exchange, I promised to stop nagging them for that week.

Here is what I learned from this experiment:

Being creative with Minecraft

They enjoy playing at most when they play with their friends online. Building in Minecraft, or games that make them laugh are fun too.

On the other hand, they do not enjoy playing when they start it in order to oppress anger or another negative feeling. Then they get annoyed by the game very quickly.

Among the various reasons they mentioned for gaming was avoiding boredom. For them this apparently is just as good a reason as any.

After we looked at all their notes together, I asked them to define what “being in control” means for them. They formed an amazingly clear definition:

You’re in control if you start gaming for a good reason: to have fun. If you start to play for poor reasons, you’re not in control.  For instance if you start gaming to postpone a task or to forget about a negative feeling. Furthermore, to be in control you need to be able to stop any time and before you have played too long, which is if you don’t enjoy it anymore.

They do not think that they are in control of their gaming at the moment: they admit that they more often start gaming for poor reasons than for good reasons.

So, here is what we need to do: eliminate the instances when they start for a bad reason. In my recent post Extensive gaming teens I reviewed some quick fix tools, such as making gaming a privilege rather than a right, discussing policies at family meetings and offering attractive activities as alternatives. All of these can help, but leaving the poor reasons to play untreated, such as postponing tasks and suppressing negative feelings may jeopardize the success of any attempt to cut down on gaming. So here is my plan: teach them how to show up for their tasks, how to deal with negative emotions, and how to make use of their free moments. Sounds easy, doesn’t it?

For a quick fix, we set up a rule that they can only play at times agreed in advance with their friends. This involves making plans together with their friends which is a challenge by itself. This proposal came from the kids themselves.

And as for the learning process, stay tuned and follow our path!

 

Extensive gaming teens

~ Sarolta ~ 1 Comment

 

In my post Screens – Is your teen in control? I tried to find an answer to the question: what is extensive screen time? In the case of my sons screen time is narrowed down to gaming, or more specifically “social gaming”: they play with their friends online. To find the answers, I carried out an experiment involving my four sons (ages 6 to 15). I have received a pretty good answer from them as to how to approach this question. I will share it with you in my next post. But first, let’s see what you can find on the Internet about this topic.

Since mid-2018, a new concept, referred to as gaming disorder is included in the International Classification of Diseases. It is defined as a pattern of gaming behavior (“digital-gaming” or “video-gaming”) characterized by

  • impaired control over gaming,
  • increasing priority given to gaming over other activities to the extent that gaming takes precedence over other interests and daily activities, and
  • continuation or escalation of gaming despite the occurrence of negative consequences.

For gaming disorder to be diagnosed, the behaviour pattern must be of sufficient severity to result in significant impairment in personal, family, social, educational, occupational or other important areas of functioning and would normally have been evident for at least 12 months.

So you can have your child screened if you have doubts. That being said, I searched the internet for gaming disorder screening services in Europe, and could not find an institute offering this service.

Extensive gamingMost of us parents tend to think we can relax when reading the definition of gaming disorder because our teen has not gone that far and probably never will. On the other hand, we would want our teen to spend less time on gaming, and more time on “useful things” because we want them to do better in everything except for gaming. In addition, we want to interfere before it gets worse.

Parenting sites suggest various measures to reduce screen time, however, most of these sites focus on children. For teens, you need other technics. The few sites that do focus on teens, are more relevant for social media addicts. However, I found some of the recommendations for teens’ screen time by verywellfamily.com useful. I will certainly take over their idea to make screen time a privilege as opposed to a right. Especially with siblings, fighting for screen time, it can indeed become a sort of a right. Each of them argue for their right to play not less than his brother or sister. It is even more complicated with more than two siblings: the standard is always set by the one who has played the most on that day.

Organising family activities as an alternative for gaming is a good thing, and it certainly helps. But it has its limits. The kids still have plenty of time to play and parents have limited time for activities. Also, having several kids of different ages makes it difficult to find activities that are attractive for everyone.

Family meetings can also help to reduce screen time, but the kids need to be willing to cooperate. If you stick to democratic decision making, and you have two kids or more, they can even vote against you. If they are not ready to cut down on screen time, you will find yourself very quickly in the blaming role during the meetings and they will fight back or ignore you. My post Family meetings based on equality offers a solution to get rid of the blaming role. But without motivation, family meetings alone won’t help.

What does help is if you have one on one conversations with them to find their inner motivation to reduce gaming time. After that you can start teaching them how to act on the motivation. And then you can put them in control.  Look for my next post if you would like your teen to spend less time on gaming.

Family meetings based on equality

~ Sarolta ~ 1 Comment

We have been doing family meetings for years now. At least once a week. Recently they have tended to fall apart: the two younger boys (6 and 10) get bored very quickly and the two teens (13 and 15) becoming apathetic. Other times they storm out of the room and slam the door.

I was wondering why this was happening. Everyone in the family considers the meetings important but when it comes to discussing certain issues such as study time and screen time, that is when the meetings disintegrate. So, I decided to stay out of the discussions at one of the meetings and observe instead. Here is what I noticed: us parents can’t hide our disappointment and the kids are constantly apologizing for not coming up to our expectations. When they realize what’s happening, they rebel and refuse to make any plans that would bind them.

So I suggested a sort of thought experience, inspired by John Rawls’ veil of ignorance concept. Let’s pretend that no one has a record of achievements (or failures), we don’t know about each other’s priorities, so no initial expectations. In Rawls’ experiment, you should act out of a position where you don’t know what role in the society you would take.

original_position
Philosophyink [CC BY-SA 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)%5D, from Wikimedia Commons
So, we as parents should try to envisage what it is like to be a teenage boy. We should try to remember for example what it feels like to concentrate on your study book when your body is overwhelmed by fluctuating hormones. They should on the other hand try to imagine how many different responsibilities we have as parents, citizens, income producers etc.

We tried this on Saturday morning. It was a complete failure: we all fell back in the old roles, we were on different pages, all of us, and the meeting ended up in arguments. We tried again on Sunday. It went somewhat better: we noticed when we were blaming each other and immediately tried to correct it. But we avoided discussing the biggest issues. At least we managed to do the planning for the day…

We’ll keep trying. It takes practice. In the meantime, I will work one on one with them on the big issue: SCREEN TIME! I have great expectations from coaching methods in this regard. I’m working with the kids on an experiment aimed to find out what is motivating them when they sit down at their gaming computer or the phone. If you think that your kids are spending too much time on internet, please follow and comment my posts tagged “teenage screen time”! I will appreciate it.

Teen pilots

~ Sarolta ~ Leave a comment

I learned that I should take the co-pilot’s role teaching them how to fly. That I should let go of the controls. So I try. They remind me of my place every time I forget it. So here I am, a worried mother who is helplessly watching her sons suffer. And I’m so worried they will suffer even more. I know in theory that’s how it should be. I have suffered. But I know how they could avoid all that pain. Do I? Of course not.

So here is how obligations are invented in our family:

We make the rules at the family meetings. These are the rules that concern allocation of chores and timing of regular activities where the resources are scarce, such as PlayStation or bathroom.

The discussions are really between the four oldest members of the family: the two young persons (Joel 13, Noe 15) and us parents. The little ones (10 and 6) lose focus during the discussions very quickly, but they do participate in the voting.

Joel and Noe keep the rules discussed at the meetings. But we do have a lot of problems with the young men when it comes to studying or practicing for their music lessons.

My solution was until now to make a plan with them every weekend and every day of the school breaks: how long and at what time they would be studying, practicing, doing some exercise or sports. We built in – I thought – plenty of do nothing time. We parents made suggestions, and they argued until we all were ok with the plans. Strangely, they usually did not argue a lot, and it was easy to reach a compromise.

So until recently, I kept controlling how they were progressing with the plan. If they were behind, I tried to make them catch up. I would say: “You have to stick to your own plan”. Noe would say: “I don’t HAVE to do anything!” Joel would say nothing but also do nothing.

As a result, they have always done minimum efforts to pass the exams and to survive their class concerts. And we strongly feel that they could do better. But appearantly it is the screens they are really interested in.

So, after a couple of years experimenting, I have to conclude that my assistance is not helping them. I have to let it go, at least the controlling part of it. Planning makes sense, but we should do it another way.

So I have decided to have a truly open discussion with each of them. Open discussion? How do you do that with your children? How can I be not judgemental? How do I convince them that I am truly open for anything they have to say? I have some ideas, let’s see if they will work. We have two weeks school break starting tomorrow – I’ll do it now or never!