Fits over Screens, help! :(

[Maiasaura]

my ds is 7-1/2. i'm not always gentle with discipline (or what people consider gentle in these forums-- i'm mean mommy and i do <gasp> yell, though i'd rather not, and i impose consequenses)

we've been having issues with "screens" lately.

he's on restriction with the gameboy, as in, he can't have it unless *i* give it to him, and then for a certain amount of time. if he fusses in any capacity, it's a longer time till he gets it again.
anyway, last night, i put it up (with its charger) in a cabinet in the kitchen. behind some stuff.
i just got up to find him playing with it in his bed. i calmly said "uh-oh, bummer, you took the gameboy. i'm sorry, but it looks like you lost it for a good long while because you found its hiding place and got up on a chair to take it".
he covered his tracks really well-- put the things that were in front of it in the cabinet back where they belonged, the charger is still in place, the chair he had to use to reach it is back in place, but he left the kitchen light on.
he is freaking, and *insisting* that it had been in his room the whole time and that he never went in the kitchen except to get watermelon (which he did-- it's in his room too). he's in there yelling and calling me a liar. or, he was. he's quiet now, but i think he put a video on.

we are really having a problem lately with "screens"-- as in gameboy and video. he wants them both available all the time and that is all he does, if i let him. lays there all day doing one or the other.

he used to seem to regulate better, as in he'd just turn off the TV and go outside, so i did pretty much let him regulate on his own. but not lately. lately he pitches an absolute FIT if they have to go off, even for meals or leaving the house, so i've restricted them and told him that he can't have them if he can't control them. at first i said it in a mean way, but i modified that. i have to tell him over and over and over, though.

but this takes the cake. i had to move the "snacks" (the un-healthier stuff) from the neighboring cabinet because he was getting chips for breakfast before i got up. i told him that if he couldn't reach "it" (whatever "it" is) with his feet standing on the floor, then he couldn't have it w/o permission. that would include the place where the gameboy was hiding.
he is bucking and bucking me lately because he wants to live on chips and gameboy/TV. he is getting up on the counters and finding things on his own. i really don't want to have to hide the gameboy. i've put it in the cabinet before, in view, and just left it there, and he didn't mess with it. but this time he *moved* things to look for it!!

what do i do? what would y'all do?

i'm tearing my hair out, here. not in view of him, if i can help it. but man.
he had the choice yesterday to go to the park today or go to summercare (city run daycare). the choice was obvious. he can't stand summercare, but being a single mama i put him there a couple days a week. so of course he chose park.
well, this morning, in his fit, i asked him again. he said "i told you yesterday". i said "i know, but i'm asking again, because i can't stand this behavior, and i don't want to take you to the park if you are going to act this way".

i'm positive he got quiet because he turned on the TV-- i've been on here too long uninterrupted. now i really don't want THAT on either, i want to get ready for our day. i was *going* to let him have the gameboy because i need to go to the gym and it would have been a perfect distraction for him while i get on the treadmill. but now i can't do that. and i will prolly have to skip the gym cause in this vindictive mood, he will likely tear up their childcare room. or make it unsafe for the littlers. or keep messing with equipment so i get interrupted.

help

i haven't had a quiet morning in i can't remember how long. he's ADHD pretty severely, and he is medicated (another thread-- no discussion please on this) and he takes a short-acting first thing so that it kicks in before he gets the long-acting a little bit later. he's mostly been responsible enough that if i leave a pill for him, he'll take it, so that it kicks in while i'm waking. but i've been leaving them and he's been ignoring them for the last couple days, so that this morning, he was playing the gameboy for who knows how long, and the fit that he had might have been averted, or been less intense, if he'd done what is expected and taken the pill.

argh. what can i do to turn this around??

[Maiasaura]

amended to add:

he has calmed down, somewhat. he was indeed watching a video. i went in and told him that it's time to start the day, and time to turn off screens. he started pitching a fit about *that*, to which i went over and turned it off myself. i packed up the DVD player (it's one of those tiny ones that you can plug into any TV) and moved it to another room and told him "i'm sorry, hon, but now screens are off limits for the day".

he didn't like it, but he seems to be acting better. i think it was the fear of not being able to go to the park that did it. this park day is one that we've been going to for a long time, and we meet other families there, and he loves it. we haven't been for weeks lately, for various reasons.

i dunno....i'm so tired of sh**y mornings, though it totally wears out my energy for the day. i've had carpy mornings for weeks and weeks

[Lingmom]

In your place, I'd probably go with total prevention of the problem -- getting rid of snack food and not buying any more, moving the TV to my own bedroom and permanently getting rid of the gameboy (or at least putting it in a box in the attic for use on road trips or something). It's not that I'm opposed to any of those things... but he might need a cold-turkey approach to his mini-snackfood-gameboy addiction. That way it's not an issue of "Mom letting me/not letting me use the gameboy or eat snacks..." it's not about you at all. You just don't have a gameboy or snacks or TV anymore.

[LynnS6]

Look at it this way, he showed a fair amount of creativity and problem solving. Those are skills you want to encourage .

I know that my kids do best when they know what the expectations are. So, for example, my kids KNOW that they have 1 hour of screen time a day. They can then choose when they want to use it. So, if they use it 1st thing in the morning, so be it. That gives them some choice, within limits I find reasonable. You might want to think about how much screen time you're willing to negotiate with your ds. For our family, in the summer I'd say 1-2 hours (though I'd be OK with 3 hours in your situation, if he gets an hour before you get up); during the school year, I'd never go more than 1 hour. Then let him decide when he wanted to use it up. When it's gone, it's gone. (Yes, you'll get some whining, but I find it much easier to be calm when it's a 'fixed' limit and not just me deciding that they're done for the day.)

I also know from my friends with kids with ADHD that screen time is a very very tricky thing. The visual stimulation is something that their kids have a very hard time regulating. Remember too that one of the hallmarks of ADHD is difficulty with impulse control. They do things that they "know" they're not supposed to. That's something you really have to work on, meds or no meds.

Finally, I would say that it's not realistic to expect him to stay out of the cupboards when you're sleeping. He's only 7. With ADHD. My only solution for that is a hard one: Get up when he gets up, or be OK with him having the video on while you sleep. You might be able to present it to him as "when I get up, the screens go off."

[chfriend]

You yell at him and he yells at you. Do you apologize when you say things "in a mean way?" It really sounds like yelling, threats to punish by taking away park time and put him in daycare that he doesn't like and taking away his stuff just isn't working.

At 7.5 "babyproofing" by "hiding" stuff and putting it up high isn't going to work either.

You may simply have reached a point where to get respect, you're going to have to give it.

How about a heart to heart where you ask him what he likes so much about games and videoes? What does it give him? Is there something else that provides him the same kind of ability to relax?

Maybe visit "All Kinds of Minds"? http://www.allkindsofminds.org/index_families.aspx

Studying up on "visual learners" might give you some insight and empathy into what he's going through with ADHD.

[Maiasaura]

thanks for all the responses, mamas. i'm going to process and keep reading and find a combination that works for us.

he's only 7, yes, but he's *extremely* intelligent, coupled with *extremely* defiant and determined to get his way no matter what it costs him. not to mention a superior feeling of entitlement :
and the part i am most upset with, after some thought, is not that he actually searched for, and found, the gameboy, and put everything back in its place, but that he lied about it, called ME a liar about it, and now it's 8pm and he still insists that the gameboy was in his room the whole time. i haven't mentioned it-- i asked him what he was going to do first thing in the morning, and he said "take my medicine", and i said "it'll be taped to the TV", and he said "no, it'll be taped to the gameboy, just like it was THIS morning", and he said it really snottily. i hate that. i try not to let it show how much it gets to me, but i'm sure i don't do that great a job all the time.

i said i yell, yes, but it's not my first line of defense, ever. it's when he pushes and pushes and pushes (and he is *very* good at that-- he tries intentionally to get people's goats, i dunno why, we've been working on it for YEARS) and even before i lose my cool, i usually get far quieter. because i'm trying to hold it in and stay calm. he just usually doesn't get that social cue that a lot of other people just would.

i don't care what he gets out of video-- i know that it calms him down and i love for him to have it lots of the time. i am not a person who's against screens. what i have a problem with is him not being able to stop. this particular thing has only cropped up in the last week or two. he's had the gameboy since christmas and when he first got it, i let him go to town, which he did, but then he started to self-regulate and has been very good at it till just recently.

i DO want to encourage creativity and problem solving. just not in a sneaky way, and not lying about it, and not continuing to hold up the lie (unprovoked) some 12 hours later!

i might move the TV...but not to my bedroom, LOL! i don't want TV in there! that is my sanctuary from the rest of the world

i have told him that when i get up, the screens go off. then, no matter what time he got up, he'll tell me he "just got up". sometimes i know that's true, and i give him another hour, but most of the time i know he's gotten up about a half hour or more before i do.

he's Mr. Excuse and Mr. Lie lately, and it's driving me *nuts*!!!

i'm still listening. i'm still forming ideas and collating yours, mamas.

thanks
pamela

[chfriend]

Originally Posted by mercyn

i don't care what he gets out of video-- i know that it calms him down and i love for him to have it lots of the time. i am not a person who's against screens. what i have a problem with is him not being able to stop. pamela

How are you going to figure out what's up with him not being able to stop if you don't care what he gets out of video?

[Maiasaura]

well....i don't know. i'm not sure if he'd be able to give me a coherent answer anyway. most of the time his answers tend to "i don't know" which is a brush-off so he doesn't have to think about it. shades of pre-teen?

do you have any ideas or suggestions of a way i can ask him without just saying "what do you get out of video games"? i honestly can't think of another way to phrase that in a way that a 7yo would understand. i'd be willing to try, if i had some other input. it's worth seeing what he says, at any rate!

[MommaFox]

My DS is 6 1/2 wih ADHD, my husband and I are similarly afflicted. So our house is often a little crazy. ADHD is like this: Imagine there's a movie theatre in your head; a nice big multi-plex. Now imagine there's no walls between the auditoriums. You've got 20 screens playing 20 movies. You can keep track of all of them. Your brain never, ever stops, like Newton's laws of motion, unless acted on by an outside source. In fact, If I try to force myself to stop thinking, I stop breathing. The screens provide a great outside force. It works just like the inside of your head. DH will often be sitting playing a video game and watching a movie at the same time. If I'm reading or workng on my computer, I have to have the stereo or TV going at the same time for background noise otherwise my brain gets too scattered in it's own thoughts to focus much on what's in front of me.
My son also does not have a TV in his room, we like to regulate what he watches. He doesn't have a game system in his room. He had a radio until he broke it. He's allowed more screen time than people probably think is healthy, but at our house it's PBS kids, TLC and Discovery. He won't watch Voyager with me yet, but I'm a bit of a : geek. His Nana lets him watch anything he wants and then whines about content : And his Grammie doesn't let him watch anything at all. It's a spectrum in our family.
If he broke the rules to get at the game system, then yeah, he loses it for a good long while. Especially if it's something he had to ask permission to get in the first place. You're in the right. Let him cry it out. My DS broke the rules recently, and I asked him if he had done it (I can't even remember what it was he did) and I could see the gears in his head turning like How do I answer her without lying So I said "Danny, this is a yes or no question." He sighed, said yes, and stomped off to his room where he screamed it out into his pillow.
As parents I think we walk a fine line between friend and overseer. I'm closer to the friend side and DH is w-a-y closer to the overseer side. You just have to find your spot, the one that works for you and your family. Good luck!

[chfriend]

mercyn, you said you don't care what he gets out of videoes. It seems like the first step is to care.

Then you can start the process of figuring it out.

But if you don't care, it's going to be hard to find the answer.

Have you checked out All Kinds of Minds?

[Evan&Anna's_Mom]

He's 7 -- old enough to be part of the solution, I think. I would take this in several steps. First, your homework -- figure out what you can live with by way of limits or screen time - max time per day you are comfortable with. Think about *why* you want to limit it and how to explain that to you child.Think about other things he can do that give him the same benefits and/or different benefits that he will be able to understand and enjoy. Some of that means understanding what the games give him. I will say that I recognize that I am addicted to games to a certain extent too -- it gives me a way to tune out the world and close off people around me and sometimes I need that. Once I get there I frequently don't want to stop. I blush to disclose that I played the kid's webkinz games until 2 AM the other night because I just zoned out. Make sure you and your partner (assuming you have one) have the same answers and same approach because consistancy is going to be key.

Then sit down with your DS and have *him* articulate why he likes to play and then why too much might be a bad thing. What are his thoughts on limits, options, and approaches. Can you come up with some compromises? That is, of course, the best possible option.

Together, if possible, set a limit, and outline how that limit will be enforced, and consequences if he sneaks/lies around those limits. And then stick to the rules, all the time. In a previous post you mention that sometimes you give him an extra hour, sometimes not. You need to be consistant so he gets used to the new routine and forms new habits. During the transition, arrange for other diversions -- outings, playdates, whatever it takes as a good distraction. It will probably be inconvenient for you and take re-arranging your schedule to make it work. But showing that you are willing to do that will help. They say it takes a month to establish new habits, so I would set a re-evaluation after a month and see how things are going.

[Fuamami]

Originally Posted by mercyn

i dunno....i'm so tired of sh**y mornings, though it totally wears out my energy for the day. i've had carpy mornings for weeks and weeks

I second the idea that you're going to have to get up before him, or at least with him. Maybe he's lonely when he wakes up alone, and the "video" (games or movies) fills the void. So much so that he can't resist, even when he knows you'll be displeased. If you want to "reset", maybe you two could get up together and make breakfast, maybe even go for a walk together first thing.

Originally Posted by Lingmom

In your place, I'd probably go with total prevention of the problem -- getting rid of snack food and not buying any more, moving the TV to my own bedroom and permanently getting rid of the gameboy (or at least putting it in a box in the attic for use on road trips or something). It's not that I'm opposed to any of those things... but he might need a cold-turkey approach to his mini-snackfood-gameboy addiction. That way it's not an issue of "Mom letting me/not letting me use the gameboy or eat snacks..." it's not about you at all. You just don't have a gameboy or snacks or TV anymore.

ITA. But, I believe that "screens" are designed to be addictive, especially for children.

Originally Posted by mercyn

he's only 7, yes, but he's *extremely* intelligent, coupled with *extremely* defiant and determined to get his way no matter what it costs him. not to mention a superior feeling of entitlement :

Honestly, I'm thinking this might be something you have in common with him. From your post, which of course doesn't tell the whole story, you are expecting him to respect you when you're not showing a whole lot of respect for him. You're expecting superior self-control and obedience so you can do your thing, but maybe he's just too young for that.

[BellinghamCrunchie]

I think that with ADHD, it is often difficult to self-regulate some things, and the parent has to take responsibility for regulating in ways that they might not do with a child who doesn't have ADHD.

What I think I see from your post is that he feels entitled to screen time and that taking away screen time in order to do something else, or as punishment for inappropriate behavior, is resulting in him getting mad, feeling controlled, and determined to show you that you are not the boss of him.

It will be hard to make this change for a while, but maybe instead of screen time being a given, with limits imposed, screen time should be earned. Completely. Its not a right, its a priviledge.

It will still probably result in a power struggle (your will vs. his). One thing that can help with it being less of you (personally) vs. him (personally) is to post house rules. House rules are developed with the participation of the whole family, and include things like: No yelling, no physical aggression, a healthy snack or meal at 9am, noon, and 5pm, treats only after healthy meals, everyone take their medication (which for you might be vitamins) at a designated time, putting away favorite activities when time is up, etc.

If the house rules are followed for two hours, everyone has a choice of 30 minutes of free time (which could include screen time, a snack, e.g. give several choices so he has control). At the end of thirty minutes, the clock starts another two hours again. Repeat throughout the day.

If a house rule is broken during the two hours, the clock starts over for that person. Only when two consecutive hours (or whatever time is determined works best for your family) have passed does 30 minutes free time kick in.

Its still very controlling, but the focus is more on the positive (you've earned this) as opposed to the negative (sorry but you lost this). If everyone is required to participate, it will help take the focus off it being all about him and his behavior - its about the family.

[LynnS6]

I just wanted to add this link re: the lying:

http://www.mothering.com/discussions...d.php?t=936090

Apparently, it's a 7-8 year old 'phase' for some kids.

[catnip]

Originally Posted by mercyn

i have told him that when i get up, the screens go off. then, no matter what time he got up, he'll tell me he "just got up". sometimes i know that's true, and i give him another hour, but most of the time i know he's gotten up about a half hour or more before i do.

I've got ADHD.

One of the hallmarks of it is "hyperfocusing" and with hyperfocusing comes trouble with transitions.

I run into this myself, when I get focused on something, be it computer time, a housework project, or a book, and then get "interrupted" by DD. It makes me cranky, and not very inclined to do what she wants. And I'm nearly 35, with 25+ years of working on coping strategies, capable of recognizing that that is what is going on.

My suggestion is to either get rid of the TV and games entirely, or to set a timer when you get up, every morning, for a 15, (20, 30?) minute transition period, after which the TV/game goes off. Or wait for a good stopping point ... the end of the round he is playing or program he is watching. I bet it will make a difference. My other idea is to possibly get rid of the cable/antenna, and let him watch a DVD/tape with a finite end each morning.

[wanderinggypsy]

We have trended a distinct correlation in our own eight year old son between too much screen time and really abhorrent behavior. Video games in particular, even non-violent ones like old school mario brothers, bring out the demon in our otherwise easygoing and sweet son. We've just had to get really firm and say 'no video games except half an hour after supper'. He really wants a nintendo DS for his upcoming birthday but I think he's in for a let down as I think his video game time would become too hard to regulate... although I've considered getting it with the understanding that it is EXCLUSIVELY for long car trips...

[4evermom]

Originally Posted by catnip

Or wait for a good stopping point ... the end of the round he is playing or program he is watching. I bet it will make a difference. My other idea is to possibly get rid of the cable/antenna, and let him watch a DVD/tape with a finite end each morning.

I never really did the timer or 5 minute warning thing with my ds. I always would tell him when this game is over we need to get going, or whatever. I figure asking a kid to turn off the computer or tv abruptly would be just as bad as someone coming along and plucking the book I am reading out of my hands mid sentence. And I know that would make me very cranky!

[catnip]

Another thing that occurs to me.

Expecting a 7 year-old with ADHD to NOT go get his video game toy if he figures out where you put it might be unrealistic. He doesn't have that level of impulse control. Remember to set back your expectations of impulse control about 3-4 years. Would you expect a 3 year old to not touch a favorite toy left within reach while left unsupervised? You can't expect that of your son, either. I think the lying about it relates to not wanting to get yelled at. He's not a bad kid. It's just a heck of a lot harder for him.

[journeymom]

: