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The Parent Perspective - February 2008 The Parent Perspective is a monthly feature where parents tell us how their families navigate today's media-saturated environment. This month’s Parent Perspective comes from Jessica in Massachusetts, mother of 15 year-old Alice. If you haven’t seen your own child develop an addiction, it’s hard to imagine the immense force of it and the difficulties it unleashes at home. Video games, even seemingly innocent ones without violence, can cause major disruption in a family’s life when efforts to limit playing time become a battle. Some children can’t stop playing unless someone unplugs the computer, seizes the controller, or takes away the game. The games our daughter Alice played weren’t sinister or inappropriate--the screen depicted colorful fantasy realms with mystical creatures. I don’t think it was Alice’s fault that over time a powerful dependency took hold, nor do I think it happened because we were negligent. She needed “down time” immediately after school, and she felt she could relax by playing a video game. After a while there was no easy way to draw the game to a close. We couldn’t force her to stop and many of the games have no natural stopping points built in. She wouldn’t agree to turn off the game and get involve with something else instead, and if she couldn’t play, she argued endlessly or tried to gain access to off-limits computers. This pattern began when she was 12 and worsened over the next two years. We tried timers, five-minute warnings, reward systems, and all the typical approaches that parenting books recommend. Even though we spent a lot of time negotiating limits, Alice was usually unable to keep to what she’d agreed to. Each time we set out the rules for the day—and we varied them frequently in an effort to find something that would work— Alice promised she would stop playing when her agreed-upon time was up. I believe she was sincere and was negotiating in good faith. She truly believed every time that this time it would be different and she’d be able to stop when the timer sounded. After playing for as little as ten minutes, though, something would shift within Alice in a way that she couldn’t control. She didn’t seem like the same person who had sat down a short time earlier. Her promises to turn off the game without a fight no longer mattered, and her mood would become very explosive. She looked different, too: her pupils were often dilated, and many times she was in a trance-like state. She also had problems with sleep, appetite, concentration, mood, and fatigue. When she wasn’t playing her game, she was craving, even during school. She lost interest in other activities, she was tired all the time, and we were always policing her and arguing about her playing. We were all miserable at home, including Alice. In calmer moments, we knew Alice understood that video games were causing a lot of problems for her and a lot of conflict at home, but there are no “rehab” programs for young people with problem video game use. We were lucky to have an expert in computer addiction nearby, who met with us and said this could be overcome only when Alice was ready. When Alice felt ready, we tried limiting her to playing ten minutes a day. But we found that any exposure only stimulated her cravings, so we realized she needed to "go cold turkey" and give video games up completely. It took more time until she took that step, but she did and it’s been almost a year since Alice stopped using video games. Soon after she'd stopped, we noticed Alice’s mood was much better, she had more patience, less anxiety, and more energy. She was sleeping and eating better too. Her report card noted dramatic changes in her productivity and behavior at school. We worked very hard to reestablish outside activities and develop other interests—guitar lessons, volunteering in an afterschool program, and pleasure reading. Alice’s transformation after she stopped playing was so remarkable that we are exploring the possibility that the impairments in her behavior, mental clarity, and body rhythms may have been due to subtle and hard-to-detect neurological episodes amounting to partial seizures. Although video games come with warnings about the possibility they can cause seizures, few people know that they can trigger partial seizures, which have few noticeable symptoms when they occur but can create very noticeable impairments in cognitive, behavioral, and body rhythms. As with any addiction, the underlying vulnerability remains even though she's not using them actively, so we have to stay vigilant. Family computers are kept in a locked room, and access to game downloads on our cell phones is blocked. An unattended computer screen is something she still can’t resist . We’re taking this a day at a time, and it’s a constant effort for all of us. It’s more than worth it, though, because it’s wonderful to have our daughter back and feeling much better. Here are some resources I personally recommend:
If you'd like to share your own experiences or suggestions in a Parent Perspective, email us at cmch@childrens.harvard.edu |
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