What happens to all these boys?

[pasanda]

All these boys who, as teens, spend most of their lives on playstations and x boxes? (I am referring to boys as this is my ds, but I know that girls can be the same too).

Who don't appear to have any engagement in much else, particularly at home?

Who seem so lazy and cba about the state of their rooms, revision, homework, and just about anything that isn't a screen!

Who do they become?

Are they destined to become adults who have no work ethic, who sit on their arses all day?

Please tell me it is a teen thing else I fear I am bringing up a boy who will have all these qualities as a man. I fear for his future wife! I fear for his future.

When will he wake up and have passion for anything??

When you turn the WiFi off?

Pasanda you are my long lost dsis! Our ds's share the same genes. We share the same cry of the heart.....pls let me know when you find the answer.

Let me guess, is he 14 going on 15? Yr 10?

I have one of these too

My sister was like this from her teens until around age 24/25. We had a "good" living room where she created a nest for herself, pulled the curtains every day and sat watching tv/dvds and drinking coke every spare second. Her friends would ask her to go places and she would say no because X show was on. She would stay up really late at night and sleep in until 3 in the afternoon, she did terribly in her A levels and went to college but once she finished there she festered in her nest. Mum and dad were supporting her and it wasnt until she was around 24 she got a job that she thought was 4 hours a week but turned out to be full time. It was touch and go whether she would stick at it because she was so out of a routine she couldnt sleep at night and couldn't get up in the mornings but thank goodness she stuck it out and actually got promoted twice. She started socialising again and started at the gym, she has left that job now and found another that is a few weeks of working and a few weeks off with lots of travelling and she is really sociable with loads of friends all over europe now. She is very happy.

My son now 16 has spent the last two years of his life in front of a screen.
In February he disconnected himself and began to focus on his GCSE's . He sat down at a desk, organised his papers, drew up a revision plan and got on with it.
Apart from the odd game of Mario Kart with his sister, he did not go back to his online games until this week, when with 2 GCSE papers left to go he went back to playing some strategy game where he has a large army and has conquered all of Europe.
Sigh.
He will occasionally take a week off and do something else. I am just hoping he will grow out of it. But I know that some of them don't. The clever ones might end up at GCHQ where they can sit at a listening post or break codes and do not need to interact with other people.
But as for the others, I just don't know.

I have two of them.

However DS1 did knuckle down and do work fro his exams and often has whole weekends away camping and has nearly completed his Silver Dofe inbetween gaming. DS2 has managed to complete his bronze and has randomly spent a couple of evening writing an essay on an obscure roman emperor that he has researched.

They also both still go to Scouts. I think there may be hope.

You sound so powerless. What would happen if you turned off the WiFi? Or are you scared to find out?

There is a bit of research out there, actually. I can't remember who by, or where I read it , but it's about screen time in general. I read it as a preparation for my school requiring all the students to work on tablets in their lessons. It actually didn't look too bad. Yes, it's not exactly for the scenario that you're describing, but the main stuff I took away from it:

• computer games and a lot of the TV programmes for younger children are not completely passive these days. Children do have to interact with them. Therefore they do learn social skills and they do learn how to deal with complex scenarios....just not quite in the way you'd want
• the computer skills in particular, yes, they're not learning much just from the movements they might be making with the controls, but it does help with their thinking skills and problem solving.

The conclusion was basically not all bad. For our purposes, there were quite a lot of positives.

Cherry picking as teenagers they are past having decisions just imposed on them. They need to learn to make their own decisions at this age and actually they would do better to fail at something early due to game playing than later when the stakes are higher.

Iam - yes he is just 15, Year 10.

Cherry - I suppose I do feel a bit powerless yes. Whensmyturn is right, he needs to make his own choices to a certain extent and says he has a plan and knows what he's doing re revision, school etc but I will just have to wait and see if this actually happens.

He is so full of angst and moodiness that to try and make him do stuff just doesn't work. It backfires completely and he implores me to let him chose when to do things and leave him alone.

But it's more than just school and homework. It's the laziness! He would rather go without pasta, than cook it himself for example. Getting him to cook something once a week for his skill D or E is like getting blood out of a stone. Asking him to do a chore is met with strops and whinging and 'for fucks sakes'. The only thing he does get off his arse for is football, but it's the end of the season now so there's not even that until the end of the holidays.

I just want to shake him sometimes!!!

Is he like this?

I can't speak from a parents' point of view, but my DP was one of these (we've been together since early teenage years). He seemed to give himself a self-imposed kick up the arse during GCSE years, and by all accounts came away with impressive GCSE and A-Level grades. He's since got a First in a STEM subject from a top 10 uni and is training to become a teacher :) So all is not lost!

As I said, though, his kick up the arse was seemingly self-imposed. My brother sounds like your DS. Despite my parents trying, he never did end up trying. However, by all accounts, he's happy with his lot, and was never interested in an academic route after Sixth Form.

Sorry, that wasn't meant to imply that your DS will do the same as my DB! More trying to say that, even if exams don't go to plan, there are always other routes.

I know a lot of hardcore gamers, as I used to work in the computer games industry. They turned their passion in to a career.

I also know people who use gaming as escapism, which leads down a different route. It depends on whether they stop trying to ignore whatever they're trying to escape and deal with it instead.

Gaming can be just like any other forms of escapism (tv, books, travel) so it's not the activity itself that's the problem. It's the reason for it.

For DS gaming is partly a displacement activity for real life stress. In the lead up to his GCSEs in desperation, I hid all his controllers. Reasoning with him made absolutely no difference.

He is mid A level now and in the last few months seems to have realised that the exams are important and that there may be a link between hard work and good results. He has played less and is even voluntarily going into school during study leave.

With DS1 - he is very socially anxious but is fine on on-line gaming and plays with school friends and chats away in a way that he can't do in real life.

Ds2 has actually found and interest in history through games, where a lot will scroll through the narrative where it sets the context for the game to get to the battles, he started reading it and as a result has carried that interest to the real world and studies the eras he is interested in independently of games and school.

Maybe it isn't all bad.

Pasanda, we share the same DS! I have faith it will get better when girl/boyfriends enter the equation. My older DD's male friends all turned off their X boxes in favour of clubbing and drinking……….Oh!

I had one of these, he lived for the Xbox, was up on it all hours, obsessed with Call of Duty, then suddenly he decided to join the Army and "play" it for real!

My brother was like this from the age of 14, also didn't really shower or do anything around the house. My mum and dad didn't really challenge him on him. He didn't revise for a levels but scrapped a D and an E and went to a uni. Dropped out and went to another that he also dropped out of. Worked in a supermarket until recently as he lost his job. He still lives wit my mum and is still curtains drawn and playing on his console. He's 29. I don't know why he's like that still.

Scraped

They grow up. Mine found other interests and kept the gaming as one interest among many. In fact DH has played computer games since they were invented.
Mine have both been through an intensive gaming phase, though not the Kevinish attitude.
They each changed during GCSEs and started to work hard and keep the gaming as a hobby. DS1 now doing Maths at a top uni and working very hard. DS2 is mid Alevels. DS2 uninstalled his beloved games before Easter to help him revise.
I have never switched the WiFi off.

My friend blames her son's obsessive gaming on his failure to complete his education. He's left school aged 17 recently and is now jobless.

He had been meant to go to work for a family friend but the company went bust. Now....she's worried and he's at home on the computer.

Limiting it when they're young is important.

Thanks for all your comments.

It's not just the gaming though. For me, it's also his sheer laziness.

He was 15 last month. I got him a card with a bit of writing on the front, you know, maybe 10 lines. He opened it and said he couldn't be bothered to read it!

He won't put his clean duvet covers on - he just sleeps on the mattress, everything uncovered.

He is starting to get more sociable which I am relieved about, but also worried about because he has been known to drink to excess, smoked weed a couple of times and I'm sure is starting to hang out more with girls. At least at home, I know where he is.

I know I'm not the only one. I've also read all the books - He'll be OK is a good one. Helped me feel calmer! Just living it is so frustrating when as a teen, I had a really good work ethic and just got on with it. Not much moaning involved!

Oral - I really, really hope that he changes next year, for his GCSE's.

I was talking recently to one of his teachers who I have had a LOT of dealings with over his time at secondary school said, that for most teens, particularly boys, they seem to realise they have to work hard only in the 1-2 months leading up to their exams. Before that, they don't really see the point. Lots coast and do the bare minimum.

Again, I hope this is the case with ds.

Orac - not Oral