I appreciate everyone who found a love of computers and a career out of their unregulated access to computers during their teens, but I’m also hoping my kid doesn’t play CoD professionally in the future. While he loves playing the game and socializing with his friends, he’s never expressed interest in working in the gaming industry.
While this is true, I don’t know that changing the rules gets me there either. I can’t create other interests for him (especially not my own hobbies), but I can at least give him the space to hopefully develop other interests. I do think your idea of giving him a day without limits could be a good reward once we get to a place where he is respecting the existing limits.
This has definitely been our strategy when we’ve caught him breaking the rules and, in the past, have done whole periods of two weeks where he has to “check out” the game from me like you would a book at the library. Because this feels even harsher than having him log hours, we use this as punishment and have tried to avoid it being the status quo.
Zeriel, glad you understand my dilemma a bit. I wasn’t trying to justify any of the online activities as better than others or as being more worthy–either his or mine!–but just giving an example of how this one thing is his main interest, and he struggles to have a backup plan when he can’t do it.
fluiddruid, your last line made me laugh out loud and presents a new and valid perspective on his napping. Admittedly, it’s not something I’d list as a hobby or a social activity (YET), but it’s good and healthy and, honestly, it makes me even feel better about the going to bed thing.
I appreciate how you use computers and what you got out of them, but, again, he’s not that varied in his activities. We chatted about it this morning, and he said he sometimes checks Facebook, but, mainly, his laptop is a device to watch YouTube videos about CoD.
JohnT, thanks for your perspective as a parent, especially understanding that I don’t want to just say, “OK, grades are good, chores are done, my work here as a parent is DONE!” I get that others think that being able to do what he wants after that point is his reward, but we already reward him in many, many, many ways, big and small, for being an awesome student and good kid. Your point about the PS3 keeping him in touch with his Florida friends at detriment to making new friends is one we think on and limiting the screen time is part of us trying to find that balance of sustaining the existing, very important friendships, but also making time for new friends.
For the record, we’ve now been using the Google Spreadsheet for over a week and are still working out the kinks. Overall, though, he says he likes that it adds up the time for him so he can see the time he has used and left and has been making conscious choices about “budgeting” his time so he can play when his friends get home from school (school here has been delayed by Irene, whereas in Florida they’ve been in school for over a week). This is exactly what I’d like to see, and I’m hoping, once he’s also busy in school, we’ll reach a happy balance. This thread has definitely given me a lot to think about how we’ll handle next summer, though.