The Great Video Game Experiment

Eh. I’ve always had limits on video games. I never really fully understood why I started loathing the video games so much. I used to enjoy playing them! A lot! I got my first Nintendo sometime in the eighties. Super Mario Brothers! Here I come! Video games sure have changed a lot. Then again… some of them haven’t seemed to change at all.

For 30 days I took mental notes as I lifted the video games limits off of Skylar. I couldn’t remember why I had limits on him. I couldn’t even think straight as to why I was telling him he couldn’t play at certain times. My mind was mush. I thought I would go all unschooly and tell him, “Have at it boy!” Yeah… I might have made a hasty decision.

• So went the full 30 days! (BTW, Skylar has no idea that I had this 30 day thing going on in my head) Here’s what I learned.
• The less I cared about video games, the less he cared. Honestly. I thought he would play forever. But he didn’t. Some days it didn’t get turned on. Some days it was on all day.
• I also learned that the more I let go of my negative feelings toward video games, the more I became interested in what was happening on the television.
• During this month I also learned where my hatred of video games began!!! My husband and I both loved video games at one point. I realized that we began not liking video games when they started affecting our son negatively.
• Our son has sensory perception problems. I choose not to have him diagnosed or evaluated anywhere. (Sometimes, I freak out and say I’m going to… but I don’t.) Video games to his little brain seem to be destructive to his well being. He is not able to work out his issues when he is OD’ing on video games. As an unschooler its hard for me to say something like that. Especially, when I am always telling others to trust their children.
• This experiment allowed me to see what was happening, and it allowed my son to become more and more aware of how he felt after he played for a long period of time. We were able to chat about it and come to an agreement on not playing at all for awhile and then maybe just an hour or two in one day. I’ll help him live up to that since it was him who decided it was probably for the best.
• We also found ways to help him during a particularly stressful game. Eating, stretching, pausing for a few, and taking a bathroom break are all somewhat helpful.

The 1 biggest thing I learned: (and I will never make this mistake again)

Ease into your new lifestyle. I had eased into everything else. But the one thing I just sort of flung ourselves into was the video games. The one that would be the hardest and affect us all the most, I sort of threw caution to the wind and made it a lot worse than I needed to. Even though I learned a great deal from this I sincerely regret doing it the way I did.

I also learned that to be an unschooler, I didn’t have to allow things to happen in my household that were destructive to my family. If someone wants to say I am not an unschooler because I limited video games, then that is ok with me. I have no intention of limiting forever. I hate having limits on things at all.

In time, I plan on releasing limits on video games, but much more slowly. I plan on just saying yes more often to his requests. I created something of a “wild party atmosphere” (thanks Sandra!) and had something of a bigger problem to deal with than when I started.