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To play or not to play-The video game question

constantly_irritated's picture

After reading a bunch of your posts, I feel like this is the perfect place for me. I have done whatever I can to stop from going nuts on my SS except get online and just vent with other SMs.

Having said that here is a brief of my situation: I met my DH 7 years ago and just loved his son, who was 4 at the time. He was a strange kid from the beginning, but I remember just playing with him and loving being with him. Fast Forward 7 years and I want to go back in time and just walk away. My SS is ADHD and seems like his whole goal in life is to irritate everyone around him, especially my BS who is now two.

The problems at this point revolve around the fact that my SS can't think of anything to do when he is not playing video games. He has NO imagination, NO athletic ability, and NO personality. I asked him today what he does at his mom's house on the weekends (we have majority custody) and basically she thinks of things for him to do: makes him read, play board games, etc. We have to do the same thing, even to the point where I have to pick out a book for him to read because he doesn't even have interests to read about! The other day I said, "Why don't you just go ride your bike?" (it took me three years to teach him to ride the freaking thing) and he replied, "I'm afraid I'll get kidnapped." I could go on for hours about his hang-ups and oddities; I'm sure now that I've found this wonderful website I'll have plenty to say. Dirol

Anyway, when we have him on the weekend, his whole world revolves around video games. We limit his time during the week and give him a little extra on the weekends. If he helps out and doesn't completely irritate the crap out of all of us he might get extra time. So now we have a kid who hovers around us all weekend unless someone, usually me, tells him to go find something else to do. Then when we give him video game time he acts like an animal that hasn't had water in days. He has friends that play and he can talk to them through headphones and we monitor that closely, but I think he is even irritating to them because he is constantly saying things like, "Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey! Look over here (insert any kid's name here and repeat that kid's name 8 times), hey, hey hey!"

I might be a bad person, but today I decided to go ahead and just take the time lock off of the Xbox and just let him do it ALL weekend long. I'm done with this fight and he can just leave me alone for the weekend. When he has to attend family events I'll make sure he showers and gets dressed, but other than that I don't even care anymore. I have a little one and another on the way, and not enough energy to think for an 11 year-old so this is my decision. I know it's not healthy, but there is nothing else that I can think of. DH has him in martial arts during the week, so he will at least get SOME exercise, but the rest of us need to live our lives.

Comments

constantly_irritated's picture

You're right about that, I just know that when DH leaves SS with me I will let him go bonkers on video games so that he is not flopping around like a fish all day irritating the heck out of my BS and me.