Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Grandma wants grandkids to stop gaming all the time
DEAR CAROLYN: My grandsons, 6 and 9, are addicted to video games. If they’re not playing them, they’re asking when they can. If I cut them off, they ask to go home, where limits are not usually enforced. There’s one exception: They love to swim, as do I. They belong to a beautiful neighborhood pool, but their mom has told me I can’t take them there except at her invitation, and I’m not allowed to ask or take them to my own club pool. She and her husband say I’m not respecting their boundaries but I feel like I’ve been hogtied. Can you suggest a solution? — Hogtied
DEAR READER: “No.” It’s timeless. Said with pleasant conviction, it’s door-closing, window-opening, attitude-changing.
No to video games past the allotted time, and no to their going home to play them. Then what will the boys do? Complain, push, mope. It’ll be miserable for a while. But if you stand pleasantly firm on your pleasant “no” of conviction, eventually they will get the message their preferred method of time-killing is not available to them no matter how hard they lobby for it, and their brains will get to work on figuring out the next method.
Success at this creates more work for you, of course, which is part of why the pull to gaming is so hard to resist. Games absorb kids into an immobilized state where their guardians need only to feed them occasionally. Once you say no and create a vacuum where this massive pastime used to be, you will have to fill it with opportunities for them to use the time productively or at least non-destructively.
You’re in my generation-ish, I assume, and didn’t grow up with the hours-of-gaming option, so you learned firsthand there are two general paths kids can go on when presented with complete idleness: creativity or mayhem. Even for the ones who find creativity on their own — tinkering, reading, imaginatively playing — you still must at least stand sentry at the mayhem gate. It’s work, especially if there isn’t an active neighborhood full of kids out there ready to absorb them (a much rarer thing than it used to be — for demographic reasons, not just because they’re all zonked out in game caves themselves). Wow I’m old today. Anyway. I’ve stuck to your part in this alone, because the answer there is universal and up to you, but there’s room for discussion with the kids’ parents, too. Ask for a sit-down, say you pushed against the pool ban not to challenge their boundaries, but because it’s the one thing you know of that gets the boys off screens without a fight. (Right?) So it was desperation, not disrespect.
Then ask for their help in figuring out alternatives. Can they suggest other things the kids enjoy when screen time is up? Parks, hobbies, games, sports? Is there something these parents have wanted the kids to try, learn, attend that you could help make happen? Is there a reason for the pool restriction that could be addressed to their satisfaction? If it’s a safety concern, for example, would they agree to having a second adult helper with you?
Short version: Present yourself as an eager deputy in rearing these children on the parents’ terms — a deputy who needs maybe an idea or two for getting the job done without outsourcing so much of it to PlayStation.
If they say just let them play video games, then, OK. They want the free babysitting and the control. So you figure it out yourself, for the boys’ sake, or drop your end of the rope.
Just have this squarely in mind throughout: You’re there not to prove yourself right; you’re there to help. My unscientific personal research says all parents want the latter people in their lives — and can spot the former in anyone in any form from any distance and with a bottomless well of resentment. “Help me help your family”: Make that the only agenda you’ve got.
DEAR CAROLYN: I know my kids have a half brother out there somewhere, because I was friends with his mother, who placed him for adoption at birth. I later married his father and had two children with him.
What should I do with this information? Talk to the father — my ex-husband? Our kids? Home kits for genetic testing seem to make this revelation very likely. Should I wait? — Anonymous
DEAR READER: Wait for what, the “BOOM”? Generally not a good plan.
Talk to your ex, say you’ve read the wind and concluded these kinds of secrets are surfacing all over the place whether people want them to or not, so — how would he like to handle this one? And when?
Because that’s really the decision people are facing now. It’s not hide-or-reveal, but instead, reveal it yourself or let it ride in on a storm you can’t stop, control or predict. Make sure the boy’s mother has a say, too, if you’re able to get in touch.
Chat online with Carolyn at 11 a.m. each Friday at washingtonpost.com. Write to Tell Me About It in care of The Washington Post, Style Plus, 1150 15th St. N.W., Washington, D.C. 20071; or email