Got to Vent: Video Games!

I hear you, and I am glad you're asking this question. As previous responders suggest, it's not so much an issue whether or not the video games are available in the home, it's about whether the parents are providing balance and enriching their children's lives in every possible way. Some kids may not have the games, but still take in far too much television – also damaging.

Maybe by asking, you'll get at least a few moms (and dads) to reconsider their shortcut parenting "technique."

The rule in my house is NO video games. When the girls were young they were allowed to play on the computer, educational games only (the computer wasn't hooked up to the internet). Often I would make a comment to other parents that video games were not allowed and they would look at me like I was from another planet.

My girls (grades 8 & 9) have always been great students A's and B's, and are in the top reading groups. I won't disagree that some video games can be beneficial (hand eye coordination), but I would much rather see them read a book.

i'm with Peg... this sounds to me as much more of a parenting problem.... nearly everyone uses the "glass nipple" at some point... but it sounds to me like what you're talking about is what I personally consider to be neglect, although the law wouldn't agree.

We have an xbox & xbox360 in our house. Plus everyone (finally) has at least one laptop.

Yes. My Ds7 LOVES video games, and we do restrict them... but by attitude, not by time. AKA, if he pops off when asked and has a good attitude about it, and isn't obsessing over them, as is exploring the other aspects of his life... he's allowed to play as long as he's not in school. We've had videogame bans in the past, as well as total electronic bans (from periods of 36 hours to 1 month)... because we're trying to teach balance... which is hard enough for most adults.

To give you an idea of his average day, this is pretty much our schedule 6-7 days a week:

- 4 hours of school
- 5-7 hours of outside time or sports (gymnastics, swimming, snowboarding, and team sports are the organized things... there's also a lot of gardening, dog walking/chasing/playing)
- 1 hour of chores... 1/2 an hour of his own, and 1/2 an hour of helping cook
- 2-3 hours of freetime... most often spent plugged in, but DO remember that we snowboard/ swim/ soccer/ bball/ plus yardwork/ farming/ tree climbing etc EVERY DAY for a minimum of 5 hours.
(And also, before anyone gripes that that isn't enough school... he's 2-5 years ahead in every subject)

Is he fixated on videogames? Absolutely. (He was MasterChief from Halo for Halloween). But we've been lucky enough to be able to USE that, both in his education... and as a possible carreer option/exploration. We've taught him to storyboard, plot, and do some basic programming... have gone on fieldtrips to Microsoft Studios & had special lessons with prof video game designers and Adobe AfterEffects specialists (he also loves filming things). He'll probably drop this fixation in time, but in the meanwhile, we're putting it to good use. Have an interest? How can you really PURSUE that interest??? Every interest in life can pay, and pay well... if a person is creative enough & driven enough.

So I don't see blaming the videogames as the problem... I DO see it as a parenting problem.

R

<laughing> & I DO have to agree with Mom LK... with many kids (mine included) if you ask him what he did yesterday/this weekend/etc... It's going to be what's either out of the ordinary or what they view to have been the most exciting. I'm guessing this isn't the case with the kids you're talking about.. but OY... sometimes from my son's descriptions of what we did that day I am the WORST parent. Sheesh.

My daughter is 4 -- slightly younger than the kids you are talking about. This weekend she was taken to swimming lessons, spent time with her Grandparents, taken out to eat at a new restaurant, and, the biggest event, taken to a pottery painting place (as a family!) to paint Easter Eggs. (Not to mention trips to the grocery store, Target, Costco, etc.) However, if you asked her what she did this weekend, she would tell you she watched television. She was allowed to watch about 30 minutes of television on Saturday morning. But this was *huge* for her because we restrict tv so much. She simply loves watching tv.

Is there any chance the kids aren't just focusing on the event that was easiest to remember? Just another perspective! Best wishes!

I am completely on your side on this one. I was a first grade teacher for five years and just finished a long-term subbing position in a fourth grade. While MOST kids do seem to have some sort of video gaming device, there are always a few kids who can think of nothing else but video games or television shows. This is not just when it's writing time, but through their conversation ALL DAY. Every conversation with peers is centered around a video game; every journal entry is about the fantasy-land that is their game; every comment in response to a book read-aloud is "this is just like in my game..." or " SpongeBob said that, too!" It's very frustrating. Essentially, what you end up with is this handful of kids that don't have their own stories. All they have are the stories that are written by others, played out in front of them. And they soak it up. Not only do they have nothing to write about, but they are so used to being entertained, that everything we do during the day is "boring". Reading is boring, writing is boring, math is boring, because all of these involve a lot more thought and a much more distant reward. Video games are designed to be addictive and they are.

I noticed that a lot of people who wrote back were very defensive about how little their kids are using the video games, or how they use them often, but are still excellent students. I don't think that those are the kids that we're talking about. We mean the kids who use these more often than they eat a meal with family. The kids whose parents think they are developing great "hand-eye coordination" yet they can't grip a pencil or a crayon and anything that takes any type of finger-strength is out of their reach. We're talking about the kids that make us sad. It's a long life and video game addiction at such an early age is detrimental to their moving ahead and succeeding at it!

To wrap up... I doubt that it's the same parents reading parenting blogs who are guilty of this type of negligent parenting we are talking about.

Girl...this is SUCH a sore subject with me! I literally divorced my husband because HE was addicted and could/would not give it up! He now has our 2 kids (girl 10, boy 7) every other weekend and that is ALL they do when they are at his house. They each have their own xbox or whatever in their own rooms and TV's WITH cable even! My husband and I don't have ANY game station at our house, NONE of the kids (including my 14yo step dtr) have their own TV or any kind of game station in their rooms NOR do we have a computer in the house. If there is a school project that needs computer time, we will bring home one of our laptops from our office. My son and daughter are constantly hitting at each other mimicing what they see and although I tell my ex I don't want them playing FIGHTING games, he just doesn't seem to get it. Plain and simple, it's his babysitter. So yes, there are families out there like that but I would also like to believe there are some like mine as well but we are for sure the minority! ~F.

Yes, my kids have a TV in their room. And yes, they spend all weekend playing video games.

This is what they say if you ask them. Reality is a little different, however.

Yes, they have a TV in their room -- an old, tiny 1980s portable TV that sits dusty in the corner, unplugged, only to be used when one of them gets sick and can't leave their room and has to lie in misery all day waiting to get better. That's when we bring in the vcr/dvd/playstation, to give them something to do to pass the time. Otherwise, the set is useless. But it's there, and they'll tell you it is if you ask them.

My younger girl struggled to learn to read and had trouble writing, and I bet a substitute could easily have come in and thought that it was our fault for letting her play all those video games she kept talking about, rather than understanding that she had issues she was born with (and luckily grew out of). It had nothing to do with screen time. I worked with her intensively; she just couldn't grasp them until she was older. But once she did, she flew. She's now reading at a fifth grade-level, despite those pesky games. She's written and illustrated her own complex stories. Not too shabby for an eight-year-old.

But you know what? She still claims to love video games more than anything, and that's all she will mention if somebody asks her about her weekend.

My kids do not get ANY screen time during the week. At ALL. So they save it all up for the weekend. During the week, they read, draw, play with any number of puzzles, legos, tinker toys, lincoln logs, a doll house, stuffed animals, etc. They also do this on the weekend, but since they do these things all the time, they don't even think about mentioning them. That would be like them telling you that they had breakfast, lunch, dinner, snacks, a bath or two, a few cups of water, and went to the bathroom several times. It doesn't register.

Oh, and they read and draw like you wouldn't believe. My older girl can draw dozens of pictures in one sitting, and goes through reams of paper. Our kitchen table often looks like an art store exploded. My younger girl goes through books at an unbelievable rate. But they won't remember to mention these, because they are also things they do all the time.

What they remember is that they finally got to play that game they've been waiting all week to play. They don't get to play until after lunch, and then they take turns, on the video games and the computer, with a timer. It's all interactive, rather than mindless TV-watching (we don't even have cable). We even try to sneak in some exercise by requiring them to play DDR. They don't get to play all day, though they always seem to remember it that way.

I've gone to school on parents' night and read my younger's journal, where it says stuff exactly like what you're saying here. And guess what? You'd be wrong about us.

Not to say that that universally applies. I'm sure there are parents who have kids who do watch TV and play video games all the time. But please don't judge the parents on what a kid might say. It's really not your place to judge the parents at all. Especially without knowing all the facts.

When I think about how much time I spent glued to a TV or playing video games as a kid, I shudder. Yet I was at the top of my class all through school (and athletic). Go figure. Still, I do believe limiting screen time is a good thing. My autistic child can't handle too much of it when it's passive, and the DS made her plain crazy and we had to take it away permanently.

But not everyone's problems are the fault of a screen, and you can't possibly know for sure that what a kid's telling you is reality. We are practically the anti-screen family, but we would still have gotten labeled as the opposite if you took my daughter's word for it: she also never fails to mention that she watched TV all weekend if we go to a relative's house and they have the TV on for a little while; since we don't have cable, TV is a BIG deal.

So maybe think about your source of info before you decide that somebody's parents are doing something horrible to their children by letting them play video games. And even if they are letting them have too much screen time, I can think of a lot worse things parents could do to their children.

I find video games very addictive myself. I've backed way off of playing them. I'm saving them as my retirement plan. When I can't afford to do anything else, then I'll play the rest of my life away.
In the mean time, since my husband and I both work with computers, we see how much of our adult life is spent in front of them and we feel our son has his whole life ahead of him and he doesn't need this right now. He needs to run and play outside and get dirty in real dirt, play fetch with the neighbors dog and enjoy being a kid. We don't let him use the computer unless he's working on a school project and we let him play a game or two maybe once or twice a month.

Our family has an Xbox 360 and a Wii, and my son now has his own computer. My son (who's 9) doesn't get to play during the school week unless all of his homework and daily chores are done, and then he's only allowed to play for a half an hour. On the weekends he's allowed to play for an hour, but most times he opts to play outside with the neighbor kids. I also restrict what games he can play to thing like I Spy, Mario Kart or other games of that nature. He wants his own DS, but hubby and I agreed that until he can buy it himself, that will just have to wait. We'd rather have him reading or outside playing that sitting like a bump on a log glued to a game system.

There are a few kids that it is all they do. (My son has a friend that, when he comes over to spend the night, all he wants to do is play DS games, which my kids get tired of). I know that ALL kids are not that way. More likely, it is all they remember much about or know how to 'explain'. My kids play outside all the time, especially on the weekends.. but they make up their own games and use their imaginations to build things (currently they have a "Hobbit hole" and a "tree house".. neither of which are much.. a folding hair in some bushes with some landscaping timbers across a ditch, and a plastic toddler slide leaned up against a big oak tree for example. But they tie bandanas on stakes and use old Tshirts attached to branches for flags and things like that). Trying to explain that in a paper at school... well.... they just wouldn't do that. They are much more likely to mention the movie they watched after dinner when it was dark outside, a little before bed. Even if they didn't watch the entire movie b/c they only had the TV on for 45 minutes.
They each have a DS, had a Leapster when younger, have iPods, and a Wii... and they don't play them half as much as you would think... even when it is raining outside... they'll go outside and get wet first, then come in, say they need a bath and then want to go back out again... (sigh). If they have just recently gotten a long anticipated DS game, however... they will sit with it for hours "learning" the game and how to beat it. Then they tire of it quickly.

I bet the kids that said they didn't have puzzles, toys, legos,etc but DID have DS and TV's in their rooms, also had all the other stuff too. But mom cleaned it up and they have forgotten where it is.

Just saw this post for the first time and felt the need to chime in.

You can't blame everything on video games. I have three children. All three had access to those things... TV, computer, video games. They oldest and youngest used them all in moderation. The middle one was very much into the electronics. Yes, he loved his Legos and books, too. But he was all about the computer, computer games, gaming systems, etc. He has recently graduated from college with dual degrees in... wait for it... Computer Science and Technical Writing! Magna Cum Laude and with Honors. (It's relevant :D) My kids' electronics time was not restricted in terms of "this is how many hours a day/week you have." But there was emphasis on school work and it always came first.

I'm not being defensive, just adding a point of view from someone whose kids are grown. What I did or didn't do is done. Sure there are things I would change if I could go back and do it all over again. But the electronics issue isn't even close to making it on that list. They are all well educated, fine, upstanding, productive citizens. But most of you would probably shutter at the amount of electronics time my children enjoyed when they were growing up. I don't believe it has to be such a battle. I believe the more you tell a child they can't have something, the more they will want it. And I can tell you that all the kids who didn't have those things at home or had restricted time at home wanted to do nothing but play video games at my house. My kids were saying, "Let's do something else." "Let's go outside and play."

Also, I couldn't agree more with the people who pointed out that what a child says isn't always an accurate portrayal of reality. I love L. M's comment about her child doing "nothing" in school all day. So typical! :D

I agree with kids playing too much video games, but just want to offer a different perspective. My son is in Pre-K and every day I ask him what he did at school and his response is "Nothing". I know that he did do something! Anyway, some kids are just harder to pull information out of. I'm not saying that they did or did not play video games all weekend, but sometimes they just give you a quick easy answer.

Actually games helped my son to read. Many he could not play until he could read the screen instructions. My son is pretty free to play and watch just about anything within reason as long as he getting his work done.
But I worked with him to get him to read. I would have to say that books our school used ( and probably many other schools) were pretty lame. I know they have to make them for both and girls, but I have to say they bored most of us to tears, I am sure that does not help a struggling child in reading. But cute nice appropriate stories for 6 and 7 year olds is not going to spike thier interest in todays world.

While I don't doubt that playing video games or watching TV for long periods of time hurts kids and I also don't doubt that there are some kids out there who may do that all weekend long, I will say that just because a child says that's all he did all weekend or says that he doesn't have other toys it's not necessarily true. So far this weekend my kids have gone to the park every day, played outside a lot, gone to the library, gone to a playland, and played games and puzzles. I bet if the teacher asks my son what he did over spring break, he'll either say, nothing, or he'll say he played the wii even though I don't think he's even turned it on yet.

My daughter is in second grade and does play DS. She gets to play after homework before dinner , and sometimes on weekends after dinner. She has to play learning games ( personal trainer math and brain quest 3th&4th grade) before she is allowed to play anything else.

She makes strait A's , has a 5th grade reading level , taught herself cursive and is doing multiplication at home.

Funny, we have both a DS and the Wii. My kids rarely ask to play with them! My nine year old will play DS after she reads before she goes to bed once or twice a week, and no interest in the Wii. My seven year old plays the Wii maybe once every two weeks. The enjoy them, but enjoy other activities more. I think that if parents encourage other activities more, the kids will prefer the other activities. If you asked my son if he would rather play Wii or Sorry, I promise he would pick Sorry! We have never made a big deal about the electronics and my kids have never been addicted. If it ever became an obsession, I would definitely put time restraints on any electronics.

My children do have TVs in their bedrooms but do not watch TV or play games during the school week. All 3 have a gameboy or a DS. I also have an xbox and wii as well as computer with games and V smile.
That being said. My older daughter (middle child) daughter is at the top of her class and is a grade ahead of where she should be. . Her reading level is almost a full year ahead of even that and her math is also above average. She has a 129 IQ. My son (oldest) is at grade level and is a B average student however reads well above grade level as well and his comprehension is through the roof. My youngest is also well above average and will be starting kindergarten this fall at the age of 4 and is already reading and has great math skills. She has been screened 7 ways to sunday and she is ready.
I do set limits as I mentioned... TV and game time is not an option during the school week. With homework, sports, church, scouts,chores, family time, regular play time (inside and out), etc. there is no time for it. But weekends it is pretty much free. After homework is done and checked friday night the kids can play and watch all they want until sunday evening, then it is officially a school night again. The kids do play video games and watch TV but that is not the only thing they do. There are tons and tons of other toys and activities to do as well as sports, church and general family time. I do not believe that TV and video games are evil or hindering our kids as long as parents are involved in all areas of the kids lives and set limits. My son has actually improved in some memory skills, etc from trying to remember how to beat a certain level on a game,etc. As well as practical thinking ahead to your next move, etc.
The games and TV are not the problem- the parents are. I hate it when violence on tv or video games gets blamed for someones actions- children who are taught right and wrong can play a war simulated video game without bringing a gun to school and shooting up their friends, etc. Just as that TV and games are rotting kids brains- that is all on the parents too. If the parents don't "know how this affects their kids" it is because they are not involved to begin with.

My 6 yr old has a DS and my 4 yr old has a leapster....we also have an XBOX 360 and a Wii....we also have 4 computers in our house. Our house rule is "No electronics" on school nights....and in the summer it is only allowed before breakfast and after dinner....all the rest of the time has to be spent doing other things, preferably playing outside!

None of my kids have TV's in their rooms, just FYI.

I feel you, and hope that some of the moms reading this will feel you too!
Everything in moderation!

My son seems to restrict his own DS time. Some days he plays it, then he can go for weeks without playing it. We don't really need to step in to regulate. Same with the Wii.
He is in 1st Grade and is in the Accelerated Reading Program.

I totally agree with you. My kids do watch tv on the weekend mornings but they do not get to watch during the week. As far as the DS I keep them in a closet and for them out of sight out of mind. I let them play when they ask which is usuallly on an extended car trip.

My son is 11 and has had some form of a video game system since about 1st grade. He is an only child (not sure if that makes a difference or not). I do know that I let him play games and watch tv more than is suggested. He does have a tv in his room, but it is not hooked up to our satellite system, it is simply for video game use. He is also an avid reader and does well in school getting As and Bs. He is not allowed to play video games until all homework is done and it is the first privilege taken away when he forgets homework assignments or for other discipline issues. He is well behaved and rarely do I have to discipline him. He also does not like to stay upstairs alone much so he does not spend too much time up there if we are all downstairs. He also spends time outside but is not on a sports team. I guess what I am saying is that it really depends on the child. As I said, he spends more time on there than he probably should and to be honest it sometimes occupies him when he does not have a friend to hang out with. I think balance is important and parental supervision. I understand your frustration because things are so different from when I was young. Also, I have not permitted him to have a cell phone as many other kids his age do.
Hope this helps.
M.