Timer meltdown

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Reading the Angry Birds thread gave me the idea to bring this up. My four and half year old is possibly NT, but has quite a few very obsessive behaviors. I believe we are going to go ahead with an evaluation. He is having issues in preschool such that they want the behavior therapist that visits regularly observe him in class.

Anyway, he is obsessed with the computer. Angry Birds primarily, but we don't have the full games, only the demos and he has played the demo levels until he has 3 stars on every one of them, and has memorized everything about them. He's branched out to other games a little bit, but also will spend a lot of time searching Youtube for Angry Birds and Plants vs. Zombies videos. He knows how to turn the computer on by himself, and usually the only way to stop him turning these things on by himself is to take the power cord or the mouse and remove it completely from the area. We were just removing the mouse, but he learned to get the mouse from his dad's laptop and use it.

Getting him off the computer is a huge fit. I have tried giving him time warnings. I have tried giving him level warnings (when you finish this level you have to quit). I have tried setting a timer, and telling him he can play until the timer goes off, because I read that helped separate it from me. Here is how that went. He is playing happily on the computer. I go set the timer in the kitchen, and tell him that when it beeps his time is up, and he has to do something else. I had set the timer for 45 minutes. He spent the next hour and a half having a meltdown about not wanting the timer to be set. He didn't play his 45 minutes and then have a fit when it beeped. He started the meltdown from the instant I told him he had the timer, and that I would not stop it and let him play as long as he wanted. I tried to let him play as long as he wanted one day a couple months ago, just to see how long he would, and after 12 hours I still had to force him to stop. Last week, he twice peed his pants while playing on the computer, because "I knew I needed to go, but I didn't want to stop playing." He's been potty trained since he was 23 months old.

I've had people telling me that I should just delete the whole thing, password lock the computer, and not let him near electronics, but I don't feel like this is a good idea for him. Even if he did move on from the computer/Angry Birds obsession, I am pretty sure something else would take its place, and we'd still have to deal with the same root problems. Anyway, any ideas would be appreciated.

So my daughter has aspergers and we used to have a really similar problem. She spent so much time playing angry birds (and one or two other things) or obsessing about angry birds that I realize that if she were obsessed with something practical, she'd be a whiz at it. So I took away angry birds and increased her exposure to things that could be a gateway to something more educational. IT worked. She got obsessed with Harry Potter which got her obsessed with learning to read JUST so she can read Harry Potter. She's only 5.5 and over the course of 3 months went from not being able to read really at all, to being able to read on par with a second or third grader. If she keeps going at her current rate, she'll be reading book one by summer.

So It was hard... but I recommend phasing the games out and trying to get something in there in their place. She will still occasionally get her hands on my phone or something, but it's a more... healthy relationship with the game where it passes time while waiting for the dentist or something, meanwhile she will read book after book for hours. No complaints on that.

My 5yo daughter dreams about games on my phone, its the first thing she says in the morning, when I pick her up from school, all day every day she wants to play games on my phone It seems to calm her down though so sometimes I am happy for her to play but it gets too much when shes falling over whilst walking with the phone, playing while eating, when shes on the loo, she will not let go of it unless the battery is dead, but then she want the ipad or tablet. Its like shes adicted and genuinely craves it, thinks about it all the time.

Yeah, this is quite a problem to deal with. It took some trial and error to find solutions for my kids. I learned from Wrong Planet that my aspie NEEDS some downtime on the computer to destress. OTOH, he couldn't get off, and sometimes he got terribly mad at himself if he did poorly in certain games. We had to think hard about the best computer games to buy. Ones that were engaging, could stop or pause or save, weren't too difficult or too easy, possibly have some educational aspect. Right now he uses Age of Empires and Roblox. He's much older than your child. When we know he is tired, we warn him not to attempt certain levels.

We had to be diligent in holding him to new rules once we decided on a solution, but he made the changes and knows what's allowed. Your little guy is so young, he won't understand the changes, so you will have to gently out-power him, and you will have to be very watchful for years. I think it is worth it.

Somebody here suggested having the computer do it for you. This may work better, or it might be worse, but I think it is worth trying. I would present it in terms of "so you don't have to worry about it, the computer is going to turn off automatically for you. That way, you can just play and not think about the timer."

I don't know anything about these programs, but here are some options for the computer: http://parental-time-control-software-r ... views.com/

There are also apps, and I believe most game systems have something similar.

There is also a homemade "pie timer" that they taught us to make in the STAR program. Just a simple circle of construction paper. Make pie slices out of colored paper. Hold it together with a paper clip.

The advantage to this is it puts you in control. For example your doing dishes. You may find the hidden dish and need another minute to finish your task before you attend to him. A regular timer would not allow you that freedom. When the bell rings it rings. Your on duty. With the paper timer. You just remove a slice when it suits you (within reason). Adjusting a slice or even several slices to accommodate you.

They are so cheap and easy to make. You can make several and allow him to earn timer's. You can leave the timer in front of him or carry it in your pocket showing him each time you remove a piece.

They use these in the classroom very effectively. So its consistent between school and home.

Just a suggestion.

That pie timer sounds like an interesting idea. He doesn't really understand minutes very well, something to tie minutes to visual might help him, and he could earn slices like you said.

We've gone through similar issues with a variety of games and special interests over the years. We've used a variety of different timers, with a visual one working best when they were little and just referring to the clock working best now. My sons can't tolerate any timer that ticks, too distracting and stressful, so that is something to consider when choosing one.

The best advice on this that I was ever given is "start how you mean to go on", meaning shape the behaviour now that you'd like to see when your kids are 8 and 13 and 17. So if you want your kids to respect the boundaries that you set, then set them and stick to them with as close to 100% consistency as you can get. We wanted our sons to follow the rules that we set for them concerning computer usage, and we also wanted them to buy into the idea of limits and balance being healthy and important, and we wanted/want them to learn how to choose those limits for themselves independently. At 4 years old we were mostly working on the first part of this with some ongoing teaching on the second as well. There were months and years when a meltdown or a tantrum or a combo would happen at the end of any given favourite activity. (meltdown being defined as an unavoidable emotional response from being overwhelmed, and a tantrum as a purposeful show of emotions designed to elicit a desirable outcome such as more video game time) The tantrums fell by the wayside when our sons learned that they couldn't influence us this way, but the meltdowns would still pop up from time to time because transitions are tough, and special interests are deeply comforting and engaging, or because needs had changed and the rules were no longer functional or fair. We as parents would need to reassess the rules fairly frequently -sometimes a half an hour or an hour block of time wasn't nearly enough time to accomplish something in a particular game, sometimes there were set save points so that asking them to turn off a game at an arbitrary clock time would mean losing 45 minutes of progress, and we needed to give them 5 or ten more minutes of "finishing time", and sometimes school stress was heavy and they simply needed more time to de-stress.

What worked well for us at the young ages-
-always have a set amount of video game time
-use a timer if it is not too stressful, visual timers are great at this age
-always give a verbal 5 minute warning as the video game time draws to the end (and maybe 2 and 1 minute warnings too depending on your kid's needs)
-reward accepting the end of game time calmly (we used a "marble jar" when our kids were small, they got marbles for good choices and could trade them in for rewards like bonus game time or a treat of some sort)
-prepare yourself for meltdowns. Possibly lots of them.
-don't penalize meltdowns, be kind and comforting (learning new skills is hard!), but don't change the rules in response to them either
-change the rules if they are no longer fair or functional, present the new rules at a time when everyone is calm, and at a completely separate time than the activity takes place, so there can be no mistaking the rule change as influenced by the meltdown or tantrum
-provide lots of alternative ways to explore the special interest that greater or unlimited time can be spent on -related board games, toys, art projects, outings, getting to talk about it with a parent, helping to teach someone else to play etc.

Our sons are now 13 and are great about computer rules and time limits. We have now moved on to the third prong in what we wanted to teach, and give them a lot of autonomy in choosing their own limits. They are very logical, and want to make healthy choices. It is no longer a fight, but a simple discussion and a compromise. I think they are well on their way to having the tools to make great choices in this regards as adults...and the rest will be up to them. So my whole point, 4 is a great time to be teaching this stuff. Start as you mean to go on, and stick to the big picture goals.

My DS has a need to feel like he's reached a "stopping point", so getting him to stop when the timer went off was initially a problem. At first I would make the cut off at the end of a level, then at some point I was able to tell him, "A whole level takes too long, I need you to pick a stopping point where you can pause in the middle of a level." At younger than 5 he definitely wouldn't have had a sense of what 15 or 30 or 45 minutes means -- he would do much better with 5, 2, and 1 minute warnings, and then told to choose a stopping point. I would suggest talking about stopping points and actually practicing (and rewarding) stopping and resuming -- perhaps the first time you sit with him while he plays and just point out potential stopping points without actually stopping.