My son has an excitable and quite reactive personality. He has some difficulty managing his emotions. He will cry and be dramatic and (seemingly totally devastated when he is punished). and can also, sometimes be sensitive and very much in tune with the feelings of others.
I have been concerned with his overly focussed attitude to gaming for sometime.Recently I watched a Victoria Derbyshire programme on which the problem of online gaming addiction in children was the focus. The programme was mostly about children using Fortnite. 3 boys from the same family where observed by a psychologists and hooked up to monitors which measured their cortisol levels whilst gaming.. The mother of the children was present and spoke about how all consuming gaming had become for one of her sons. He was unsurprisingly the one whose cortisol rocketed whilst he was being monitored gaming.
I state this because I believe that this trait seems to be something which my son possesses as part of the way he is rather than something I have inadvertently nurtured.I can imagine his cortisol would be very high given an experience such as that shown on the programme.
I am terribly concerned about it and quite unsure what to do. I do not know where to go for advice because no one seems quite what to do.
I certainly do not, and never have given my child a free reign with online gaming. He is allowed an hour during the weekend and if neighbour's children come over he is allowed to play on his Wii with them for an hour or so. During the week I allow him to use the iPad and the Wii for an hour on Wednesdays and Mondays. He plays Roblox, I have set the required birth date etc so that he can only access specific games. He also plays Minecraft and Skylanders.
His life seems to revolve around using his computer time. Once it has been used he seems to be calmer. I understand that with some children being less controlling of time on technology might make it less attractive but even when I am more relaxed with computer/iPad time etc over the holidays my son is still focussed on games. He talks about them constantly. His art work is about characters, and games he plays at school seem to be reenactments of the online games.I can deal with this. What I find more disturbing is sometimes he will lie to me or make up stories so he has access to technology when he is not allowed it. For example this morning a neighbour's child came to play. He asked the child to sneak his iPad in when he knew he wasn't allowed. I recently heard about a child wetting herself because she was unwilling to take time out during a gaming session. This was no shock to me as my son has done it a couple of times,
Gaming is part of life for most youngsters now so banning it is not a realistic or productive option. Further my child is an only child so reading, Lego etc are not always enough to keep a child going when he is on his own. I do not have a backyard and am a solo parent so going to the park on a school night after work is not easy. My son however gets lots of physical activity and is involved in a number of activities and sports which he enjoys in the weekend and during the holidays. He also gets to go to the park and run around when at my childminder or at aftercare.
i wonder if anyone has had a similar problem and has found any positive ways of managing it.