How to Raise a Healthy Gamer: Break Bad Screen Habits, End Power Struggles, and Transform Your Relationship with Your Kids

If you really want to engage your kids, the first thing you have to do is just take the prize completely off the table. You must be able to have a conversation with them without having them think that anything they say is going to change how much you let them play.

“Nothing you tell me now will affect your screen time. There may be conversations about that in the future, and I’d love to have you be a part of the process of setting those limits when we get there, but this conversation has nothing to do with that. I have no goal right now except for understanding.”

as a parent, your job is also to let your child have fun and do things that are important to them. Tell them this!

You can mention that in the past you’ve been judgmental and haven’t really tried to understand your child. If you can authentically own that, it’ll mean a lot to them.

Apologizing up front for mistakes you’ve made is tremendously important for repairing relationships. You don’t have to force it, but make sure you put it out there.

I think we both need to understand each other better in order to move forward. While we’re talking about this, I don’t plan on changing any limits to your gaming. How do you feel about helping me understand the gaming world better?

When you behave in a reactionary manner—cutting off the WiFi at 10:30 p.m. with no warning because you’re pissed off or snatching the controller out of their hands when they disobey you—they’ll behave impulsively as well; they will respond just as irrationally as you have acted.

there. A lot of what we do as parents is to try to teach our children what’s right and what’s wrong. We’ve been doing that since they were born, basically. Oddly enough, what we find, especially as kids get older, is that if we try to teach them something, they become resistant. But if we can help them figure something out for themselves, that’s where the magic happens. Open-ended questions do this.

Open-ended questions tend to create distance in a way that helps a child feel safe in responding.

Good open-ended questions also lack judgment.

Do any of your friends struggle with gaming too much? What’s that like for them?

What do we do that makes it hard for you to talk to us?

“I get that. Right now, you’re fifteen years old and, yes, I want you to have fun. I’m kind of curious, what makes video games so much fun?”

Reflective listening is a very simple technique, but we humans are often terrible at it.

There’s nothing wrong with this impulse to reassure or make things better—it’s a generous and loving reaction. But it’s also not meeting your child where they’re at. What you’re actually explaining to them in that moment is that their feelings (of being ugly or unlovable, in the example above) are wrong, and that is very invalidating. We need to help them validate their emotions and feelings, not negate them, even if we don’t agree with them.

If you keep going like this, just listening and reflecting back what you hear to your child, a subtle thing starts to happen.

If you keep going like this, just listening and reflecting back what you hear to your child, a subtle thing starts to happen: Your child starts to feel heard, they feel understood, and they feel that you care. This is called “emotional validation.” The more they feel this way, the more the fear center in their brain—the amygdala—shuts down. There’s nothing to be fearful about, right? You’re not fighting them or threatening them. You’re not on opposite sides of the table anymore. You’re on the same team, because you get it. The more you do this, the more validated they’ll feel, and the more likely they’ll be to listen when you speak.

As parents, you know that, a lot of the time, your kid will say things that don’t make sense or are flat-out wrong. Our temptation is to tell them so right away. Of course you want to correct your child—you want to tell them that what they are saying doesn’t make any sense, that they are wrong. But that doesn’t work.

To avoid this kind of breakdown in communication, try expressing confusion instead. Point out the problems with their thinking without attacking them.

If they don’t have any answer, your point has been made.