I feel like my 8 year old is growing up too quickly.

[Worrywart21]

He’s always been very popular and enjoys playing with his friends. He has changed so much in the past year and it’s making me quite sad.

He seems so grown up recently. I’m wondering what’s normal for his age. He has two friends that live a few doors away. Anytime we are home he wants to go round for them if they haven’t came round for him already.

Then when they’re not in he wants to play some kind of console or watch YouTube videos about the games he plays on the consoles. It’s bordering on obsessive.

I’m struggling with how to pull him back now he’s allowed so much freedom to play outside (only in our garden) and gaming with his friends online. He hardly ever watches tv programmes aimed at children his age. It’s all YouTube and gaming. And he certainly never wants to play with toys.

We limit the console to the weekend only but at the weekend he is resistant to leave the house as a result. During the week once homework is done he’s out playing with his friends.

The boys on our street are sweet and innocent but I’ve heard his friends talking at school and it is all about gaming & fighting. It’s a school in quite a bad area.

We are considering moving area and school to a better area to help with this. He’s in beavers and football so he does go to different clubs too.

I feel unable to cut the gaming out as it is literally all he and his friends talk about. They’re allowed on during the weekdays too, he isn’t. Would it be possible to cut it out completely or is this just normal 8 year old boys?

Normal normal normal. My boy is 8 and he's exactly the same, out playing with his friends in the street, if not watching YouTube or playing on his switch. All his friends are the same. He has plenty of extra curricular stuff going on, football, taekwondo and we make sure we do things as a family on the weekend and he gets his homework done before YouTube or consoles and he is a happy well adjusted boy doing well at school with lots of friends. Just wanted to reassure you it's all normal. It's hard to watch them grow up so quickly though, he's changed so much in the last year or so!

Ahhh really . Thanks for the reassurance. I really am trying to hold onto him for a while longer. I think when I’m around he acts differently from when I’m not there. If I watch him when he doesn’t know I am, he is full of bravado and acts so old in front of his friends.

He still acts young in certain ways at home, he’ll want me to read to him, tuck him in at bedtime, sing to him etc so when I see this mini teenager at school I’m almost shocked.

He’s my first born so I don’t know what to expect and I just want him to stay a child for as long as possible.

Same!! He still wants me to read him a bedtime story maybe every other night and is still very cuddly but acts far more grown up when his friends are around xx