Games - A Happy Ending!

I am reminded of an 8th grade student, named Tony. One day before school in the gymnasium, a student reported to me that Tony had picked up a smaller child named Steve and body slammed him to the hard gym floor. As the Principal, I should have immediately high-tailed it to the gym. But, considering the source of the report (it was from a less-than-reputable student) and the difficult-to-believe nature of the story, I intensively questioned the student for a few more seconds.

When I decided that there might be some credence to his story, (although I still imagined that it was just a rumor), I quickly went to the gym, whereupon I saw Steve on the floor, holding his neck. After we attended to Steve (fortunately, he was not severely injured), I asked Tony what had happened.

To my disbelief, he indicated that he had picked up Steve and body-slammed him to the gym floor. He had been practicing that move for a few weeks after he had studied it on one of his video games. He also noticed that the victim on the game always got right back up and continued fighting. He wanted to see if it happened that way in real life, too! Well, Tony, in real life – people don’t get right back up and sometimes they don’t get back up at all after being body-slammed to the gym floor!

Tony was not a fool or a child with severe learning disabilities. He was an above-average student who, under ordinary circumstances, would have never tried that move in real life. However, due to video game addiction, Tony’s judgment became clouded enough that he actually began to believe that a child in real life might react in similar fashion to a video game person after becoming a victim of violence. Yes, Tony actually believed that Steve would just hop right up!

Unfortunately, Tony’s parents (separated pending an upcoming divorce) were nothing like Ben’s parents (I wrote about Ben and his parents in a previous post) who had quickly interceded on their son’s behalf. No, Tony’s parents scolded him for hurting another child and then they let him continue with his video game playing despite numerous pleas from me. To the surprise of nobody, Tony was later often suspended from high school and he became a dropout at age sixteen. Does this scenario sound familiar amongst your child's circle of friends? I hope not, but it occurs more often than you might think.

The happy ending is that we gathered a team of experts, Psychologist, Social Worker, and a Clinical Counselor, as well as some of Tony’s friends, his parents and I, and we performed an intervention. We confronted Tony about his violent behavior and his path to destruction and his journey to “loser-dom”. After nearly an hour of people telling Tony how much they cared about him, Tough-Guy Tony broke down and cried and admitted that he did not know how to deal with people, including his friends, without getting violent.

After about 6 months of intensive therapy, Tony and his Therapist concluded that his addiction to the violence on the video games had clouded his judgment and, yes, Tony had come to believe that there was no difference between the violence in video games and the violence in real life. Ouch!

Fast forwarding a few years, Tony went back to high school and graduated before venturing off to college to become a ..... yes, a Therapist! Today, he maintains a successful practice which is geared toward helping children with addictions, including the ever-growing actions to video games! Finally, a happy ending to a troubled youth!


Paul W. Reeves

Video Game Addiction - Part 3

(Continued from November 22, 2008) ....... According to the fine folks at the National Institute on Media and the Family, “For the video game addicted person, a fantasy world in a game has replaced his or her real world. The virtual reality of the game is more inviting than the every day world of family, school or work. With the increased access to pornography in games, this fantasy world may be highly sexual. The first step to healing is to recognize the symptoms. Help from a professional is often needed”.

I am reminded of a terrific middle school student of mine from several years ago named Ben. Ben was the perfect child/student in every way. He was handsome with movie star good looks and jet blond hair, a gifted percussionist, sought by all of the girls for courting, and sought by all of the boys because their personal stock rose when they were in the company of Ben!

In addition, Ben always got an “A” in every single class. On top of all of that, Ben was just about the nicest child in the entire school. In fact, during the years that Ben was my student, even though he was 12-14 years old and my daughter was pre-birth through nine months old, I was sometimes wished that Ben would wait for my precious daughter to grow up, so that he could marry her!

Yes, he was so perfect that he was good enough for my own daughter (as many boys in our town can attest, my daughter’s father has a very high scale for her potential suitors!).

With all of his attributes and gifts, you might think that some middle school students would become jealous of Ben. But, no, he was revered and loved by all!

One day in the 7th grade, I noticed that Ben had an inordinately high number of students crowded around him (even for Ben!) before school in my classroom. When I inquired as to the extra interest in Ben, one of the students told me that Ben’s parents had just bought him a video game system (this was in 1987 and he was the first child in our school to get one of these) and he was explaining the various games to the students.

I don’t remember the cost of the gaming system, but I do recall that Ben had indicated that the individual games were $50.00 each (in 1987 prices)!!! While this was my first experience with one of these devilish toys, and while I couldn’t believe that anything that cost that much money for one game could be good for a child, I was willing to wait and see the effects. Over the next few weeks, I did notice that Ben and his friends could speak of little else, other than the latest video game that he had obtained and conquered, sometimes with the help of his friends. Before-school and lunchtime stories were filled with killing, annihilating, and the severing of limbs that had occurred on the previous night’s game.

Well, it was only a few weeks until I noticed that Mr. Perfect Ben had become angry and insolent with his friends, unfocused and disinterested in class, tired on most days, and, even though he had been able to previously speak intelligently on a variety of subjects, he was now solely wired to speak of his video games, sometimes even during class! Other teachers began to notice the change, as well.

To make a long story short, I spoke to Ben’s parents, who were both highly-paid and well-respected professionals, about the substantial changes in Ben’s behavior and schoolwork. After several conversations, they agreed to limit Ben’s video game activity. In fact, they told me that they had punished Ben for his improper behavior in the home by taking away his game system for the weekend. They indicated that his behavior that weekend was similar to person who is in the detox unit of the hospital (no kidding!).

Apparently, that weekend was the final straw in Ben’s household, as his parents began to wean him of the gaming system a little at a time, until Ben no longer much cared about his video games.

YES!! However, how many times has a similar scenario played out in many other homes and the parents did not act to intervene as did Ben’s parents? In my experience, very few parents have taken the necessary steps to intervene, because they have been led to believe that the video games are not dangerous or injurious to a child. WRONG! How about your house?

So, watch the games that your kids are playing, monitor the number of hours that they log with the games, and take the necessary steps to protect your child!

Now that you've been sufficiently motivated, we'll take a break from the video games for a little while. Hang in there and take care of your kids!


Paul W. Reeves

Video Game Addiction - Part 2

If your child plays a “harmless” 3-4 hours of video games on each school day, and then another 7-8 hours on each weekend day, your child’s video game time could easily total 29-36 hours per week, many of them alone in their bedroom or basement!

Back when you and I were little tykes, that time was used to speak with friends and family, play baseball, basketball and other sports, study, complete chores or tasks in the household, reading, or even just plain relaxing. Now, with over 30 hours per week devoted to video games, your child may simply be too tired and stressed to engage in any other activities, ….. other than eating, of course!

According to the National Institute on Media and the Family, “When time spent playing video games reaches a point that it harms a child's or adult's family and social relationships, or disrupts school or work life, that person may be caught in a cycle of addiction. Like other addictions, the video game has replaced friends and family as the source of a person's emotional life. Increasingly, to feel good, the addicted person spends more time playing video games. Time away from the game causes moodiness or withdrawal.

When a child spends up more than five hours a day playing games, major social, school or work disruptions will result. Time away from the game causes moodiness or withdrawal”.

This is a good moment to ask yourself, including all of the hours of the week, even when you’re not home, is your child logging more than five hours a day of video gaming? Of course, while it is not actual playing time, this includes the hours of game research, questioning of friends to learn new tricks to unlocking secrets to their favorite games (so, that they can kill more people!), and thinking of new tactics, as well. Unfortunately, I can speak from my experience with middle school kids (more on this in a future post), that what begins as a seemingly harmless event eventually turns into a level of addiction. The only question is to what degree will your child become addicted.

Continuing with the research by the National Institute on Media and the Family, they have defined the symptoms of video game addiction as follows:

For children:
• Most of non-school hours are spent on the computer or playing video games.
• Falling asleep in school.
• Not keeping up with assignments.
• Worsening grades.
• Lying about computer or video game use.
• Choosing to use the computer or play video games, rather than see friends.
• Dropping out of other social groups (clubs or sports).
• Irritable when not playing a video game or on the computer.

There are even physical symptoms that might point to addiction:
• Carpal tunnel syndrome.
• Sleep disturbances
• Back, neck aches
• Headaches
• Dry eyes
• Failure to eat regularly or neglect personal hygiene

Without question, in my over 25 years of working with school children, I have seen all of these symptoms, many of them to mind-numbing proportions! By now, you’ve probably already packaged up that game system in a nice, clean trash bag and you’ve placed it in your car, so that you can drive it to the dump tomorrow! But, in case you’re still holding out for more proof that video games can be addictive and dangerous to your child’s mental health, come back next Saturday!!

In the meantime, the Thanksgiving break can provide children with a lot of unstructured time in which to engage in video game activities. Be sure to monitor the content of the video games, as well as the number of minutes/hours that are spent with the games. After all, this should be the perfect family weekend! Have a great holiday!


Paul W. Reeves

Video Game Addiction - Part 1

Although this topic mostly applies to boys, girls can also be affected by the addictions, habits and lessons that are developed from the use of Gameboy, GameCube, Xbox, Playstation, Wii, and other video games that are competing for your child’s attention.

If your middle school child has one or more of the aforementioned game systems, or other similar systems, based on many years of watching students fall into the trap and allure of these systems, my advice to you is to explain to your child that you’re trying to be the best parent that you can be, you want your child to grow up to be a healthy and well-adjusted adult, and that you’re willing to do anything at all to help them succeed in life, and then …….. GET RID OF THEM RIGHT AWAY! The game systems, that is, not your kids!

While the concept of such video games might appear to be innocuous, these games can have an addictive and debilitating effect on your child, particularly as they advance through “killing” various characters to get to the desired location on the game, encounter scantily clad men and women throughout the games, and increase their addictive intensity levels as they get closer to the desired victory over the enemy!

Yes, these elements are actually present in many of the games! While there are a few friendly and harmless games to play, (sports games, for example) I would venture to guess that your child owns one or more games that contain violent and/or inappropriately sexual elements to which you do not want him/her exposed. In reality, for many middle school children, time spent on video games is out of balance, and has displaced work, school, friends, and even family.

And, if you say that you’re a parent who would never allow such garbage in to your home, that’s terrific! However, I then have two questions for you: 1) Have you actually sat with your child for the necessary hours (yes, HOURS!) when he/she plays the games to make that determination, and 2) Does your child have access to these games at a friend’s house?

It has been my experience that the playing of even the friendliest games can lead to the beginning of an addiction that can only be satisfied by playing more and more of the dangerous games.

And, don’t forget, there are financial costs involved with the cost of the actual unit (between $100.00 and $300.00), the individual games (approximately $30.00 - $60.00 each), and the accompanying magazines (approximately $10.00 each) that help to unlock the mysteries of each game. A parent can go broke just by feeding their child’s dangerous addiction!

I will write more in the coming days on video game addiction. For now, please be sure to monitor the video games that your child plays and to log the number of hours that are spent with these games!


Paul W. Reeves