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

when you express confusion, you are genuinely trying to understand their point of view, and to get them to explain it to you. You’re demonstrating what you think and what you believe, and you are asking them to examine the holes in their own argument.

When going meta, you don’t want to get into the weeds or details—going meta is not about the content of conversations. Going meta is all about noticing a pattern of communication,

When you “go meta,” you don’t try to fix what you are arguing about, but instead think about how you can rise above it and just observe the tension from the outside.

Going meta allows you to be vulnerable and gives your child an opportunity to be vulnerable back. You’ve stumbled—both of you have. Neither of you is good at this, and that’s great to acknowledge and will help you move forward. You’re going to have to learn how to do this together, even if neither of you really has a clue as to what you’re doing.

Vulnerability also allows us to model learning: Neither of us has all the answers. But we’re in this together. We are lost right now, but we’re going to find the answers, and we’re going to figure it out together.

It’s okay to slow down the process if it’s taking longer than you thought. Just give it some time, stay consistent, and keep seizing opportunities to talk with your child. If you keep showing up for them, willing to learn and willing to listen, they will eventually open up.

What matters to them—both their goals and their values? • How do games bring them joy? • How does gaming affect their friendships? • What is the least enjoyable part of gaming for them? • And last, but far from least, what are the potential concerns they may have about their own gaming? Until you understand all these things about your child, you are not ready to start setting up boundaries.

Once we start targeting something that the person actually cares about, we have something with which to fight against the addiction. One gamer I know told me he started enjoying games when he was about eight years old. I asked him what else he remembers happening when he was eight. He remembered doing math worksheets, something

You can’t hand them a reason, because then it’s your reason, not theirs. But if you can help them develop their own reason to quit gaming, they stand a very good chance of becoming a healthy gamer.

Don’t fall into the trap of providing answers if they can’t think of anything themselves. Use your openended questioning skill set

ask them what they think they can do about the problems they’ve identified. Ask them how they think they could get involved. This question is important because it puts the heavy lifting on them

you need to be sure that your child is feeling heard and seen before you start in on your point of view.

take the opportunity to thank your child for working with you so well thus far.

now that they are feeling listened to, ask them if they’re ready to listen to what you’re saying now. If you’ve done the first part of this alliance building well, they will be willing and ready to listen to your point of view at this point.

as a parent, you have a multitude of responsibilities, and the first one on the list is preparing them for real life.

The net result of all this talk—you listening and validating them and them listening to you—should be that you’ll have isolated at least one common goal.

We’ve said that you can start playing after your work is complete and checked. So it sounds like I can check it at 5:15 p.m. every day, and you can start playing at 5:30. What if it isn’t done at 5:15? Then the next window to check it is at 8:30. Understood?

“Here is the goal. You figure out how to make it happen” is often far more effective than you trying to impose a particular solution (yours) on them. In this way, you are teaching them that they have the requisite skills to solve a problem themselves—they don’t need you to do it for them.

you don’t have to do it my way, it just needs to get done—and feel a sense of ownership over the process.

if your child has a problem with the amount of time and energy they put into video gaming, chances are you’re going to have to treat them a little bit more like they’re seven instead of seventeen, and really work with them to set up structure in their lives.