Dh using the lounge tv for gaming

[turquoiseshone]

We have a 10 year old who stays up until 9 on school nights and 10 weekends.
She likes to sit with us in the evening but Dh used the lounge tv for gaming.
She does have a tv in her room but doesn’t want to spend her evenings in her room and her younger sister is in bed at 7 and they share a room.
She gets bored and wants to watch tv but Dh wants to game.
I don’t think this is fair as the kids get older and stay up later.

The number of gaming haters! Gaming is no different from any other hobby, and certainly not any worse than watching tv. BUT of course it’s not fair to hog the main tv if others want to watch.

We have a gaming setup in the box room so the tv is always free for shared watching and the lounge is never hogged. If the space isn’t doable, then agreeing times so everyone gets time to watch tv together is fairest.

Grown adults who game at the expense of family time with the their kids are pathetic

I’d say I’ll be needing the tv Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday night and Sunday night is family night and I’d share with dd on my nights, and openly tell dh I was doing this so dd felt she had a family to spend time with because him gaming in the living room evenings was the opposite of her having a family to share time with, and he should think very seriously of how he saw his family and his role.

That’s really selfish it should be for everyone

I like reading but it doesn't affect anyone else - I'm not using something that is shared and other people want to use. Someone monopolising the TV when there are two other people wanting to do something different really isn't the same. He needs to find a screen that isn't the communal shared one so that at least some of the time other people can use the TV too. If there are three of them, perhaps he gets it 1 out of 3 evenings so everyone gets a proportional turn.

In the days of 1 TV parents' choice usually trumped everything. There wasn't any gaming. It would give me the ick

But the point is that he's not compromising. It should have been obvious to OP's husband that it's pretty selfish to monopolise the sitting room TV all evening every evening anyway, let alone once his child became old enough to want to spend time there before going to bed. It's incredibly hypocritical of him to tell her she's had enough screen time whilst he continues to demand exclusive use of the main screen in the house. Why does everyone except him have to compromise?

Heh indeed. Always makes me laugh.

There's so few things people can really get their teeth into slagging off these days. Hobbies that take adults away from families for full days is more acceptable to one in the house close by.

I feel sorry for the uptight buggers personally.

Gaming is the equivalent of taking crack on mumsnet. If you admit to liking gaming when you also have a child Im sure they put you on some sort of terrible parent register. I happen to think watching reality tv/soaps/rom-coms, taking long baths and drinking wine are my idea of hell but I don’t bark on about how pathetic people are if they enjoy those things as everyone is different.

Im more surprised on the timing of the bedtime for the ten year old. What time do they get up? They still need to be in bed 12 hours ideally. It’s so late to be going up bed. My ten year old still went up at 7. Had a bath and chilled with books in bed. Bed by 8 at this age is still totally reasonable.

In our house the TV is taken over by the girls and their dad gaming 😅 Only at the weekends although at the moment we are watching Traitors on a Friday. Other times he uses it for gaming after they have gone to bed. I just watch my shows on another device, it's not a big deal. I would ask the husband to hold off gaming until she has gone to bed if she isn't interested in playing with him.

I was a huge gamer, dedicated whole nights to it in my 20s. Funny though once I had babies I found I didnt have time for it anymore. And as they got older the idea of doing it in my limited time with them seemed selfish and at odds with the whole idea of having children in the first place.

Now they have left home, I suppose I could take it up again. But I work fulltime on a screen and in my spare time I dont want to hooked up and in, Id rather paint, cook, decorate, hike, swim.

I feel sorry for your DD that she has a father who cant or wont grow up and be the parent she needs.

Can't he game in your bedroom on a tv in there?

Is the issue that you see the lounge as a communal place and he's using it as his own gaming den that you and your daughter are the audience to ..?

Not all kids sleep 12 hours.

"A 10-year-old child needs 9 to 12 hours of sleep per night, with many paediatric sleep guidelines suggesting 10 to 11 hours as an ideal target."

One of my dcs never sleeps more than 9, it's like clockwork. Other one needs longer, depends on the child.

Sorry that was meant to quote a pp, and for some reason it lost it.

Or maybe the kid could go to bed at a reasonable hour and let the parents have some down time. 9 on a school night is too late and 10 on a weekend means when do you get child free time to decompress when there's always a kid about?

If you refused to find time in a day to give yourself a break and enjoy a hobby then that’s up to you. Not everyone has to be a martyr

He'll want to stand with the big screen I suspect.

Can't you all game together? We love something like Overcooked or Moving Out as a family game. Or bloody Mario kart.

We love Moving out!

Yuck. Grown adult men playing video games gives me the ick! 🤮

Out of interest do you have the same views about women who game.

I'm not really sure what the problem is.
Surely something like this would work.
2 nights a week girls watch TV upstairs to have a girly night while husband plays games.
2 night a week watch a family film in lounge till 9pm, then adults can watch something together.
2 nights a week child has to entertain themselves in their own room, adults watch something together.
1 night a week can be flexible depending on how everyone is feeling, a family games night for example.

My kids are younger so we aren't quite there yet but only a couple of years away as our eldest is nearly 8. At the moment we watch one TV show together between 8pm-9pm no later than 9.30, I go upstairs to watch something I like and go to sleep by 10.30 I like my time on my own to decompress so does my husband, then my husband games till about 11pm.
Once our kids at older I'd follow the plan above.

He needs a TV in his bedroom.

I regularly game in the front room but if someone else wants to watch TV then their wants trump mine.

I can’t read with the TV on so if I want to read, I’ll go into my room/in the garden etc.

The front room and kitchen are family rooms.
Individual activities like gaming or reading in silence do not trump the family’s activities. They should only be done if no one else is there/they are doing something else.

I agree, I am firmly in the dcs shouldn't need entertained every second of the day camp. There should be a happy medium, family time yes, but also some time to yourself is vital too, and children need skills to use their imagination and play without an adult always arranging everything. It is good for dcs to see their parents taking care of themselves too instead of being stressed and frazzled, we are all human and not machines.

Why?

Do you feel the same about men who watch films or do a crossword?