Minecraft - like crack. How do others manage it?

[merce]

My DCs (9 and 7) are utterly obsessed with Minecraft (has been Angry Birds and all sorts of stuff in the past). I am rather old school and tend to be quite sniffy about endless time spent on screens. I had some pointless fantasy that they would spend the summer holidays being creative, climbing trees, inventing plays, blah blah. Yeah, right. Anyway, in my experience whenever I cave in allow them to play this wretched game they turn into highly-strung addicts. It's almost impossible to get them off it - I have to drag it out of their hands - and they tend to be in a vile mood for a good while afterwards. I really RESENT the fact that the whole thing forces me into the role of some harridan saying 'no' the whole time, but if I left them to their own devices they would just stay in darkened bedrooms all day glued to screens. Wondering how other parents handle this. How much time is too much, for starters.

Dunno - I'm afraid I don't manage it too well myself really but at this moment I have three boys around 9 years old in the house currently playing together on various PCs in the house (DH works in IT so we seem to have lots of the things). On the upside, it seems when they play that there's lots of teamwork, strategy, planning, negotiating and fun. I think there are much worse games they could be playing but yes, addictive as crack!

I'd say about an hour at a time is ok. Any more & they start to get tetchy.

Also, might be worth looking at some of the advice given in this thread: www.mumsnet.com/Talk/sponsored_discussions/2141529-What-tactics-do-you-use-to-get-your-family-to-look-away-from-technology-in-favour-of-real-quality-time-150-voucher-prize-draw-NOW-CLOSED

Many thanks for that link - will take a look!

My 8yo is horrible after he has been playing Minecraft and, from chats with other mothers at school, this seems to be quite common.

He is limited to once a week in term time and an hour a day max in the school holidays BUT he loses his hour if he has been naughty.

I think we've just cracked this one .

6 yo son's a very slow eater. So we say that if he finishes his meal within 5 minutes of us grownups finishing ours, he gets half an hour's minecraft.

Then we set the timer. After it goes, he has to close it down.

If he does this without fuss, he'll get another half hour tomorrow (same terms about eating). If he sulks or argues about closing down, then he can't have his half-hour.

so far, so far, it's working really well. And believe me he can sulk for Europe.