F*#@ing Fortnite...ruining our lives 😫

[mrsthoree3009]

Please can anyone help or advise or just empathise. I feel like I'm at the end of my tether with my son. He is 10. Before his dad (who doesn't love with us) got him into this game, he was honestly such a lovely boy, would have his moments like all pre-teens but nothing major. He was doing dance club,football, loved to draw, played out with friends, etc. But since this game has been in his life, everything has stopped. Nothing else matters to him except this bs game. I limit him to an hour on after school and limit him to 2hr then 3 HR break on weekends. But he is so rude, so distruptive to the whole household. If he isn't on his game he is a nightmare. I'm usually really chilled and it takes alot for me to fly off the handle, but this week he has made me loose it. Hes lost Fortnite for 3 days now. But he's still rude. I say right tomorrow can we please start afresh, and he will moan about times, everything is about f#&@ing Fortnite!!! He was above average at school, now he's below. He is putting on alot of weight. He never wants to do anything. He is making me and my husband argue about it. It's affecting his sister's. And now he's saying, in spite at first and now will just say it, that he wants to go live with his dad. It kills me. I feel like the worst mum. I feel like he's gone from being a mummy's boy to actually hating me. And I blame this BS game 😫 I don't know what to do anymore 😢

[wombatsears]

Omg take the game off him full stop! Why are you letting him play it at all when it's obviously so bad for him and for your family.

[wineusuallyhelps]

@mrsthoree3009 delete it, remove it, whatever. Just get rid! We did. Our children have lived to tell the tale and the world didn't end, funnily enough. I believe they felt trapped by all the peer pressure and weren't truly happy playing it anyway. Our home life improved very quickly after it was gone.

[Pixiedust2017]

I am going to give you the following advice as a gamer. Personally I don't think stopping him from playing will help long term as everyone needs some down time so to speak.
Make sure the computer is not in his room. Put it in the living room or somewhere you can watch him play and keep an eye on it.
Turn the wi-fi off at a set time every night (even if its just when you go to bed or something).
Games like fortnight are best not limiting a time constraint to. Limit the number of games instead. So say 2 or 3 games a night on a school night and up to 6 on a weekend? You probably know already but games like Fortnite and LoL are played in a match type style and don't have a set time limit on them. So he could lose a game in 5 minutes or it could last up to 20 minutes or longer. If you come in demanding he turn the game off at a set time but the game is half way through this will cause anger and resentment.
Make it so there is no "screen time" until chores/homework have been completed to your satisfaction. This includes phones.
Alternatively I saw a fantastic idea of "Time tokens" on another thread in which children were given a set amount of screen time a week based on age and had to spend "tokens" to claim an hour of time. Once it was spent they were allowed no more screen time until the next week.
Remember that these games also have a big social element so restricting him from playing may impact his social standing in school, another reason I would not ban it completely. Have you tried talking to him about your concerns?
At the end of the day it is your house and your rules and while banning computer use in our house would not work at all, it may work really well in your household like pps.

[PristineCondition]

I’m a gamer too. Get rid.He’s 10

[MrsTerryPratchett]

Now is the time to teach about emotional regulation, boundaries and health.

IKR! But it's true. When DD watches/plays certain stuff she gets obsessed and her behaviour suffers. We speak calmly about it. "When you watch x I see you did y" then I remove it for an evening. She moans. I say "I'd like to allow it, I know you love x. Let's see if you can try and behave and we'll see". She gets it back. If I see a tiny slip, "DD nope" removed immediately. Some things she gets back based on behaviour, some she can't regulate and doesn't. But it's all based on her behaviour.

[Anastassiabeaverhausen]

That game is banned in our house.

[Thesnobbymiddleclassone]

I'd sell the games console to be brutally honest.

[FluffyMcCloud]

Sounds like for whatever reason he has had an extreme reaction to this game and honestly I’d just ban it completely. Mine were into Fortnite for a bit and we have strict screen time limits, they are onto something else now. Screen time is always an issue in our house as DH and I have different views on how much is “ok” but if their behaviour was suffering in the way your son’s is, it would just be gone!
Explain why, let him scream and shout, it’ll be a horrible week, but he will live and be better for it I think.
It’s hard though. Good luck!

[OneOfTheGrundys]

Delete it. Ride out the resulting behaviour. He’s too young and it’s too much for him. You’re the boss and you can do this.

[CarlGrimesMissingEye]

I'm a gamer too but I'd still remove the game. I know how addictive they can be. If he's not emotionally ready to cope and to stop without behaviour deterioration then he need to not be playing.

I would guess he's downloaded it though so it may need to be a console ban unless you feel proficient enough to uninstall it?

[bodiddly]

I get that Fortnite is addictive and that they love the game but surely as a parent you retain control here. I'm not sure I understand why you have allowed him to stop all the extra curricular activities, let his work slip etc. if he can't self regulate (which most can't at this age) then just ban it during the week and make weekend gaming dependent on classes attended, work completed to a high enough standard, no moaning about not having it etc. We have had to do that in our household. Weekdays are about homework, chores, seeing friends, sport etc and stress is placed upon Xbox being a treat/privilege not a god given right!

[Booom]

we had similar nightmare. we stopped all screens in the week and allowed fortnite once a week for 3 games. huge improvement in behaviour within days.

[megletthesecond]

I'd get rid of the console tbh.
My ds turned into a nightmare with games and watching you tubers play games . Would not stuck to agreed limits in the house and kicked off when I told him his time was up.
Now I don't even keep the tablets in the house, they only come out for long car journeys and when they have to wait for me at an appointment.

[sophisticatedsarcasm]

Luckily my DS 10 hates this game. A lot of his friends play it... now coming to think of it they have turned into little fuckers. I think you need to give him some ultimatums like unless your attitude changes you won’t be playing it. I’ve heard many say it’s like having an addiction.

[Taffeta]

We have the following restrictions for our soon to be 15 yo DS

One hour weekdays
Max 2 hours with min 1 hour gap weekends
At weekends must attend social events and sports jobs and events

We don’t restrict the when wrt homework as we found he was rushing it to get on XBox

Any pisstaking with time he loses it the following day. Up to him to manage the whole “but I haven’t finished this game” shit, eg stop 15 mins early and then keep that 15 mins in “the bank”

[CrimsonFootstool]

Get rid of it. If you did, would your ex support your decision and get rid of it too?
If you don’t do it now imagine what he’ll be like in 5 years.

[Zoflorabore]

Ds in year 11 is addicted to this too, I hate it.

Fortunately he is revising for his mocks at the minute and has tons of homework so he's hardly on his Xbox at the minute which I'm glad about.
We were getting to the point of imposing restrictions too as it was making him angry.
He's almost 16 so I don't want to treat him like a little kid but I was not happy with the constant banging and crashing coming from his room.

Dd is 7 and hates gaming thank god.

[JungMum]

My son has turned in to a zombie. He hardly speaks to me. This morning I went in to wake him up and I lay down beside him for a minute to tell him he'd have to get up in five minutes and he murmured ok. When I got back up he pulled me back down to cuddle him for another minute. I thought this boy has gone. He's replaced by a zombie. I'm at work all day and I'm not here so I will have to knock off the internet when I get home in the evenings and read books. The kids laugh at me and think I cannot do that but I think I can.

[ThanksHunkyJesus]

Get rid of the game. He's obviously not mature enough to cope with it. He'll be furious but that's ok. He's allowed to be angry about it. What he shouldn't be allowed to do is act out about it.

[JungMum]

Can we have an idiot's guide to how to set controls?

I'm a single parent, I don't know myself and I"ve nobody to ask.

[RoxyStella]

Bloody hell. What an awful situation.

I definitely wouldn’t have any time after school on it. Do some research on after school stuff that he can do in your area and make a list and tell him he is going to be doing one at least and which one does he like the sound of. He needs something else going on in his life.

Think outside the box a bit.
Archery
Climbing wall
Speed skating
Diving

[pinkhorse]

My ds is only allowed on it at weekends.

[Tronkmanton]

Get rid of the console. We did, we now have our son back! And weirdly, he doesn’t miss it and was actually relieved!

[Pixiedust2017]

In response to saying delete the game. Thats fair enough, but you can play fortnite as far as I am aware not only on consoles/computers but also ipads/tablets and phones. So you would also have to ensure that he doesn't know how to download it and that it hasn't been placed onto any other devices. Or just ban all of them.

JungMum What kind of controls were you wanting to set and on what devices?

[nordstrom]

We had similar with ds (12). Fortnite was taken away completely. He is now only allowed to play on the Xbox at weekends too. We have seen a huge improvement in behaviour.

My advice is to address this now. There will be short term pain, but you are doing this for him as much as the rest of the family. He clearly does not have the emotional maturity to deal with this sort of game! Hell, a lot of adults don't!