Introduction
As a parent, you need to be careful of what your child does. There is a fine balance here. On one hand, you don’t want to enable your child to do anything and everything. On the other hand, you don’t want to stifle your child either. Both of these routes can be detrimental to its development. So, how does one parent go about letting their children play videogames? Read more below.
Monitoring your child’s habits
Again, there is a balance here. You can’t just prohibit your child to play videogames, at all cost. You will need to monitor their playtime. If you think that things are getting out of hand – then intervene. On average, if your child spends more than 2-3 hours per day playing videogames – you may have a problem. You will need to be strict here. This won’t be a popular choice – it won’t bring you any points for popularity with your child. This much should be clear to you. But it’s a necessary move in order to prevent a full-blown addiction to videogames.
Monitoring what your child plays
There are fun videogames where the main character collects coins and jumps on turtles. And then there are videogames like Postal and Manhunt. It’s all fine and well for grownups to have a chuckle while playing these games. But they are not appropriate for children. The child may be influenced in a bad way if it plays these kinds of games. As a parent, you will need to watch your child’s game-playing patterns. Of course, chances are that your child will be wary not to tell you if it’s playing these games. You will want to do some searching on its computer. See if you can uncover anything unusual. And if you do – then it’s time to intervene.
Why not suggest sports games, what might also give your children an interest of a specific sport and want to try it out in real life? There are plenty of good games, in all sports. For basketball, the NBA 2k20 is a great choice for example. Maybe your kid won’t join the National Basket League, but perhaps shooting some hoops in school will be on their mind.
Helping your child to get social
One of the potentially worst things that can come out from videogame addiction – is the lack of a social life. In fact, the lack of a social life can spark a vicious cycle. Your child may get addicted to videogames and have no social life as a result. Due to the fact that it has no social life – it will deepen its connection to videogames. And so on and so forth. You will want to help your child make friends and hang out with them.
In conclusion
If you’re careful, then your child will have a proper development into a healthy adolescent and an adult. We sincerely hope that this is what will happen.