Xbox time

[Mintychoc1]

Can I ask what other people do?

I’m a single parent (no paternal involvement), 2 DSs age 9 and 13. Both very keen on football, they do training and matches at weekends, and we’re also season ticket holders for our local team.

In the summer they’re at the park a lot, but when it’s dark/wet, they’ve basically got into the habit of being on the Xbox for the whole time after school.

Yesterday I got a letter from DS1 (age 13) to say he’s not achieving his potential academically. He’s lazy - does the bare minimum for homework, feels it’s a breech of his human rights, only does it at weekends, insistent that school is for learning and rest of the time is for fun.

I’ve decided he needs to do a bit more in the evening, not just Xbox.

I’m wondering what other people do? Do they just switch it off after tea? Is it on the whole evening ?

I just what an idea of how others handle the inevitable strops!

You just need to talk to your son patiently about school complaints and why is he not achieving his goals. I'm sure there is something bothering him and he is not able to tell you. All you need to do is just ask him with love and convince him that you're there to help him whenever he needs. He'll definitely share his problem with you. He is in his school-age so there are many things that he cannot explain. So don't worry he'll definitely and be patient.

We have a rule for school days where the children do their homework first, they will then show me what they've done and if I feel that they've put in the effort and done what they can or have spent the correct time on it, then they can go on their electronic devices.

No PlayStation after dinner here. (Monday to Friday)

I'd also bribe him with time at the weekends if he's done the homework during the week.

I have a 12 year old and it's only just dawned on him that secondary homework isn't necessarily designed to be done in one night and that he has to break in down to produce the best work. Say maths homework is 20 easy questions, 20 medium and 10 hard. Before, he'd try to sit down and do it all on the night before and the work would become messy and the mistakes creep in. If he does each section on a different night then his work is much better. He's seriously misjudged how long an assignment takes on a few occasions so aims to do work at least 2 days before it's due so he has a buffer.

I have similar age boys and we have no xbox on a school day. Xbox causes so many issues for us and this is the only way it works.

DS played on his from 3 till 6, many of his friends were still on till really late and he complained like mad that he wasn’t allowed to. That was true as I have an Xbox and was friends with a couple of his and could see them on at midnight which was my Xbox time after he was in bed.

We had issues with him once so removed it for a week.

Make a no rule after dinner or something and make a sanction known. You must follow the sanction through if they break the rule. DS loathed us beyond measure when we removed his Xbox. It’s at this this age that parenting has to come first and you have to stop worrying about them liking you.

I saw someone else on mumsnet say they configured their router to only allow a certain amount of time each day for each of their children's devices. When the time was up they couldn't connect again until the next day.

Thank you. I’d been thinking along the lines of “no Xbox after dinner”.