Has anybody else got an only ds who just sits and plays on the wii and watches tv after school until bedtime.

[hellraiser]

Hi
I get worried about it alot as I think that he should be having more of a social life than what he is.
The problem is that I have tried to encourage him to join clubs, play out with children in the street, etc, and I just cannot seem to motivate him at all and it ends up in a screaming match and what doesn,t help is that my dp will stand there and ask what my problem is and why I won,t let the kid just chill out and play on his wii or watch telly if thats what he wants to do.
He won,t join in with children out playing in the street as he says they will all end up at our house and he prefers to just play with one person and doesn,t mind just having somebody from school for tea.
The thing is I know that if he got out there and played with them he would love it.
as for clubs he will not hear of them, I suspect he is a bit shy with people he doesn,t know, and I did ask him if that was the reason and he just simply says that its because he does not want to go to these things and he doesn,t have to.
Should I just leave him be and let him play on his wii and watch telly all of the time.
I can,t even motivate him to go the library, swimming, etc.
Are only children like this and should I just leave him be and stop worrying about it.

To Chacunasongout, you pointed out that a 3 year old spending at least 90 mins a day and on occasion 5 hours on PS is "sad". I am the unfortunate mum with the said "sad" 3 year old and tbh, i find your comment quite patronising and a tad offensive...

To clarify....my son sometimes spends 90 mins playing with a game on his PS that is suitable for his age group- he's not shooting aliens or hacking anyone to death. He loves the PS - it's fun and the activities are challenging - and when he asks to play it. he's allowed to have 90 mins. If he has 90 mins of Ps, he doesnt get any TV on top of that and he's fine with that because he'd rather have the Ps than watch Cbeebies. He doesnt always ask for PS and at the time of writing, he hasnt had it on for 3 days because he's been busy doing other things. The 5 hour thing I mentioned was an absolute one off because he was playing the game with his Dad and i wasnt there.

The anti-video game sentiment on here is quite predictable - we all want our children to be doing healthy, uplifting, educational activities rather than staring at a screen. It makes us feel better about ourselves as parents . The reality is that children enjoy TV and video games and I do not believe there is anything wrong with these activities IN MODERATION. I made my post in response to and out of sympathy for the OP, not to lay my parenting skills (such as they are) open to attack from other forum members who clearly consider their children above such crude and mundane activities as video games.

To conclude, I am happy for my children to play video games as long as a)i am aware of which games they are playing and b)there is a time limit to their activity and c) playing video games is one activity among a whole host of activities in which they partake and enjoy.

it was not meant as a personal 'attack' try harder but i do stand by it

childhood is very very short and to spent such large proportion of it infront of screens is sad i think - a reflection of society not you..