Am I the only one that feels that LZ's son is pretty impressive? He cleans
his room, does his homework by himself (pretty well most of the time), keeps
good grades at school and has a hobby (even though most parents don't
regard it as a good one). Most impressively, he has a goal, a rough plan and
seems to have a resolve to achieve it. I don't think it is common in a
middle schooler. If parents look back to your middle school years, did you
have these traits? I didn't.
My son is almost 13. So I gave some thought about conversations with him in
future for these types of situations.
I would try to start a conversation by complimenting him on these good
qualities of his and admitting that I was quite impressed. Next, I would
spend some quality time with him to truly understand where he is in his game
playing. Maybe he is a true genius in his games. I would follow up with a
question for his more detailed plan to achieve his goal, such as what
milestones and in what time frame does he plan to reach? If he doesn't have
a road map yet, I would probably help him create one. My goal for this
conversation is for him to feel his parents are understanding, supportive
and have genuine interests in his well being.
Next, I would let him know our demands on him. But I would start by saying
that we respect his enthusiasm in his games and think he is quite good at it
. However, as parents who are the more experienced ones, we are responsible
to look after his long term interests. He probably knows how hard it is to
reach that highest level in order to make a living. So he needs to keep a
second door open for his future by doing well in school and keeping his body
healthy. If he feels the same way, I would work out with him the details
about his grade levels and amount and types of exercise.
Finally, after we reached some kind of agreement, I would let him know that
we understand that, with his goal and our demands, there will never be
enough time in his day. So he has to learn to manage his time most
efficiently everyday. Of course, we will help him in every which way we can.
So the bottom line is he will probably get what he wants (4 hours of video
games) and we will get what we want (good grades and exercise). What's lost?
Some of his sleep.