‘My son only gets insufficient grades since he plays Fortnite’

A shocking report this summer: a nine-year-old child has been admitted to rehab. For game addiction. The British girl got up at night to secretly play for hours, wet her pants because she didn’t want to interrupt the game, and hit her parents in the face when they took her tablet. Culprit? Fortnite. An online game in which a hundred players on an island compete with each other until one remains. The game now has 140 million players worldwide.

Immediately a nuance: this girl is an exception. Six percent of all gaming children exhibit problematic gaming behavior, where parents feel that normal parenting will not make it. Second nuance: there is always something wrong with those children. For example, they grow up in a troubled family, are bullied or have difficulty making contact. They play away negative feelings with gaming. Nevertheless, gaming, and especially how you keep it in check, is a hot topic.

Wii knows

“Until I’m dead!” In how many living rooms would this disturbing phrase be heard every day? With me, with two boys aged eleven and eight, yes. Or this one, in a fierce tone: “You know how hard I worked to get to this level!” when after three times asking kindly if the screens can be turned off, I pull the plug from the socket. Recently I read in a notebook of my youngest son that he had spelled ‘weekend’ as ‘Wii kend’. When I had just returned from a city trip, the same son said in a sweet little voice: “I missed you, mama.” “Yes dear, so do I!” I replied. “Yes,” he continued, “because you have such a fun game on your phone that Daddy doesn’t.” There you are, with your emotion.

Games and TV

Recognizable, for Lucy (41), mother of Sally (11) and Mex (9). “I kept the tablets and game consoles out of the door for as long as possible. In the end I gave in anyway. Also because they already played with friends. Mex now can’t get enough of Lego and Minecraft on the iPad. If I think it plays too long, I sometimes hide that thing. Then he goes looking for that thing with the heated look of a junkie, wildly opening all kinds of cupboards. His sister has had a phone since she was ten. But she uses it as a TV to Span gas and Bridge class to watch. I understand that more often, I also watch it from time to time. ”

After King’s Day, her son came home with a very old iPhone, bought for ten euros from his savings. “I was still hoping it was broken, but unfortunately. Fortunately, he can only play a limited number of games on it. ”

Contact

If your child attends an iPad school, such as Janneke’s (39) seventh grader, then of course you ask a little bit, she says. “Only: the games are ‘locked’ at school. Not at home. ” Janeke’s two sons, Noah and Levi, aged eight and twelve, are home alone three afternoons a week, until she and her husband come home from work. And no, then they are not drawing. At first it seemed fun to her, that Fortnite.

“They play it online, with classmates. Noah is not the most social, so that seemed like the way to make contact for him. But at a certain point we discovered that he played all day long. He cried when we took it away. The worst part is that since that Fortnite he only gets insufficient grades. Last week, at the breakfast table, I told him, “The coming months will determine the rest of your life. It is up to you.’ My husband gets angry about it more often. Then he throws those games off the iPad. Something we then disagree about.

Prohibiting does not help; then they play it with friends. My son is now also shocked by his low grades. I hope it is a wake-up call for him. ” With friends Janneke talks about ‘No-Lifers’ when it comes to their children. They kind of live IN their screens. You hardly get in touch with them. I feel sorry for them. Go do something, I think. ”

Punishment

Margot, mother of Timo (10), Leni (8) and Jack (3), does punish. “If the eldest two had secretly played in their rooms when we told them not to. And sometimes also when they come home late after playing outside, or have done something naughty. I sometimes hear them say to each other: “I’m going to tell Mommy, then you get a screen ban.” But I have no illusions, then they play at friends’ houses. I would never say anything about that. ”

There is no point in prohibiting or punishing, says Justine Pardoen, co-founder of Bureau Jeugd en Media, which has been studying the ‘digital education’ of children for twenty years. “When you get angry or frustrated, you are emotional and you also appeal to the emotions of the child. While you want to teach your child to think. ”

Set clear rules

What does work? Set clear rules and comply with them. So even if it actually suits you that they play games, so that you can get rid of some emails. For example, Janneke’s sons are not allowed to play games in their room. Margot’s children get one hour of screen time every day before dinnertime and on weekends in the morning. The same goes for Lucy’s. “Although it always gets longer at the weekends, because I like to sleep in and they suddenly wake up remarkably early.” Mine can spend an hour and a half on Wii on Wednesdays and weekends (and those many w’s are a handy mnemonic for the boys themselves).

An hour a day is not much, if we are to believe recent research. About 65 percent of primary school children game between one and four hours a day; 12 percent of them game more than four hours a day. Incidentally, there are no concrete guidelines when it comes to screen times (wider than gaming), although parent-child centers often recommend an hour for children between 6 and 8 years, one and a half hours for children between 8 and 10, two hours a day. for 10 to 12 year olds and a maximum of three hours per day for children from 12 years old. However, showing an interest in your child’s gaming is at least as important as limiting, says Justine Pardoen.

Show interest

What exactly does it play? What’s so nice about it? “But also: why are you so angry that you are not allowed to continue playing? What can we do to make things better next time? You can still say to a toddler: ‘Because I say so’, but you can’t get away with that with an older child. You can very well explain to them that it is not good for them to sit still for a long time, that they have to move a lot, with those bodies growing. ”

“When do you turn that game off?” I hear myself, or my friend, say it daily. Wrong, says Pardoen. With such a small word ‘that’, you put gaming in a negative light. Rather say “your game.”

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Switch over

Ben (37), father of Yade (7) and Noëmi (2.5) is not so concerned about the media use of his daughters. He does notice that, as soon as the device switches off, his eldest daughter suddenly ‘seems to have to get out of everything’. “Then she suddenly starts shaking her sister or something.” That is normal, says Pardoen. “Children always have difficulty switching. But if your child can no longer be controlled at all, or does not feel like doing something that he normally really likes, that is a sign on the wall. ”

A team

For those who think that we have brought in the antichrist with those Nintendos and X-Boxes and Playstations, Pardoen has good news. “Gaming isn’t all bad. You can also lift a nice game. With Fortnite you learn to form a team with people you don’t know. And a team like that doesn’t just let you down because your father calls for you to eat. ”

Age advice

A while ago we received an email from the teacher. She had noticed that GTA was the talk of the town in grade 7. She pointed out to parents that it is a computer game suitable for ages 18 and older because of the realistic violence it contains. And the sex scenes in it. The what?! I just didn’t knock over my coffee. My children may not play GTA themselves, but they do watch boys on YouTube who play GTA. Yet Justine Pardoen notices that not all parents take age advice seriously. “It is good to realize what message you are giving your child with that. And also: you don’t let your child watch porn, do you? “

Involvement

I myself have to admit that I often have no idea what my boys are playing, even though they are two meters away from me. When they play games, I usually read the newspaper or work a bit on my laptop. In fact, sometimes I borrow my thumb to install a game without knowing what I just bought. I have to admit, I find it difficult to take a genuine interest in Pixel Gun 3D, JW Alive, and Sonic Dash.

Lucy also confesses that she has no patience for those games. “Mex has tried to explain to me what he plays, but then I quickly dropped out. He realized that too: ‘It’s okay, Mom, that you’re not listening’, he said at the time. ” So it does matter, says Justine Pardoen. Not listening once is not a disaster. But if that happens more often, a child may start to think: mom or dad is not interested, I can’t go to him or her. ” She just wants to say: as an involved parent you must of course have a leg to stand on.

Practice what you preach

So that’s what it’s all about: being available. Present. And no, if you yourself are behind your iPad, you are not present. That’s a point, Ben admits. “Practice what you preach, that sometimes falls short. I am addicted to my phone. And sometimes crawl behind a laptop after dinner. ” At work, they expect her to be online continuously, so she doesn’t put her phone away easily either. “I hardly ever call anymore, but I text all the more.”

Margot also finds it difficult. “My husband has grown with his iPad, which reads all the international newspapers on it.” Lucy’s other half looks back on TV programs. “So you think you can dance, those battles and all that. He does that together with our daughter, which I also like. He works partly at home, at the dining table. The worst thing is when he sends another email from his phone while we are already sitting at the table. ”

‘It will be fine’

Now that we look in the mirror, isn’t that complaining about the new media that help children to damnation of all times? How many kilos of biscuits with chocolate have I worn out as a prepuber, looking at Eastenders, The golden girls and The Knots family? Margot used to watch “MTV all day,” Ben remembers his parents thought reading comics would make him stupid. He is now a math teacher at a VWO, Margot is a dentist. In other words, it will work out all by itself.

It was also the remedy that Volkskrantcolumnist Tonie Mudde suggested for all those addicted gamers: just get older. Now games, which are made to swallow you up, are something different than watching a TV series lazily on the couch, but Justine Pardoen thinks it is too easy a solution anyway. “Then you might as well stop parenting completely. You have them under your care for so short: one blink of your eyes and they are out of the house. Then you want to guide them to adulthood as best as possible? ”

She has a tip for that phrase “Just a minute, until I’m dead!” less often heard: help your child with plans. How long does an hour take? How long fifteen minutes? ‘ Then it will learn that it is not convenient to start a new level five minutes before dinner. And finally, a reassurance.

“If your child likes to play games, but also sports twice a week, also likes to go to grandma, and has enough friends, don’t worry. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.Now I’m going to play a game of FIFA with my son. Then we only eat ten minutes later.

This article has previously appeared in Kek Mama.

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