The 3DS Problem

I confess. T has a DS. A 3DS -- a DS with a 3D screen. Of course, two months after acquiring the latest and greatest, they came out with the 3DSXL -- a larger screen, which he immediately wanted.

For those without small children right now, the DS is Nintendo's current hand-held game system. Game Boy on crack. 

I caved to the "all the other kids have one" plea. He goes to daycare and they were giving them 30 minutes of DS time at the end of the day, and no, he was not the only kid without one, but he was one of a very few.

And, the cool thing about this system is that they can tap into each others' devices and then be playing with each other -- for instance, they can team up on Mario Kart and try to outdo the system's "team." So there is a social aspect. 

T loves his 3DS, except for the fact that it's not the XL version. He has a zillion games. We sometimes play together -- albeit less so now that I have my iPhone -- but we cooperatively play Mario Kart or Angry Birds or bowling. 

But.

Developmental trauma-affected brains don't handle screen time well. So we limit. 

He knows he gets 20 minutes per day. Thirty if I have to work after he gets home from school. Don't get me started on me having to go back to work after I've put in my hours. It's a job and it pays the bills and I need it and am grateful to be employed, but the hours overage happens much, much too frequently and it's bad for his brain for him to be plopped in front of a screen to keep him quiet and it's damaging to our relationship for me to be ignoring him. Maybe I can teach him how to write sql. Hmmmm…..

I digress. I guess I got myself started.

At any rate, he knows he gets one 20-minute session. And yet so often it turns into a battle anyway. He wants a second session. Or a longer session. Or two 15-minute sessions. Or whatever. And on about January 2, I informed him that -- for the rest of the month -- he was not allowed to ask me if he could play his DS.

So he's turned to Hubs. Hubs is following the once per day, 20 minutes per time rule. Except yesterday was T's birthday, so he got an extra five minutes. That's okay. That was cool. A nice treat.

Which he chose to use to play Pokeman, because he was close to getting to some level on Pokeman.

Except that for his birthday, he got a new character for his Skylanders Giants game. And he wanted to play that too. So a couple of hours after Round #1, he came around asking Hubs for Round #2. 

We empathized with the fact that he wanted to play with his new character, but that he'd made his choice earlier that day. So, no, sorry, not today, but he could look forward to playing with Whirlwind tomorrow. 

He grumped, buried his face in the couch, kicked Whirlwind across the living room with his foot, and refused to talk to me for two hours.

Bringing me to a conclusion: This 3DS is causing too much conflict between us and is damaging our relationship.

So there is going to be no more 3DS playing in this house. He can play while riding the bus, during daycare's 30-minute window, while waiting in a doctors office, during long rides in the car, but it is no longer an inside toy. This is not punishment, this is not a consequence -- this is a matter of eliminating an area that damages our relationship building -- and we will present it that way.

There will be an initial "I'm not talking to you period," but after that, one area of conflict removed. One less excuse for him to find to not speak to me for hours on end every day -- to emotionally distance himself from me.

I'm not a fool. I'm sure there is another "thing" waiting to take its place. But whatever it is, I won't wait two and a half years to recognize and address.