"He just plays games all day. I don't know what to do."

Parenting an adult-child who lives with a controller in hand.

Generally speaking, two types of people talk to me about video games. Other gamers and parents.

The former is usually my intended audience for these posts as I work to try and bring light to the intersection of video gaming and spiritual formation. Yet, it’s parents of children who play video games that likely need to read these the most.

Rarely are video games introduced in adulthood (though, of course that happens). Most individuals who game have been doing it since adolescence—when they most need the guiding hand of their parents.

Ironically, the parents who talk to me are almost never the ones in the middle of raising their children. Instead, they are almost always dealing with an adult or late-teen son who seems to be a “failure to launch”.

“He just plays video games all day, and I don’t know what to do about it. He doesn’t get a job, isn’t going to school, and only talks to his friends online.” All of that is usually followed by, “Phil, can you talk to him?”

It took me a few years to figure it out, but the answer is usually “no, that won’t do any good.”

I’ve begun to try and invest some time and effort into talking to parents who still have children at home who play video games. But those conversations are often volatile, to say the least. Young parents (much like young children) struggle to receive thoughts and correction from someone else.

Over the next two weeks we’ll address both broad-brush scenarios regarding parenting and video games, starting with working with an adult child.

The Simplified Story

From what I can tell, there seems to be a fairly common progression of parenting in relationship to video games. Roughly, it seems to go like:

• Child plays games on a tablet or phone when they’re young because it’s educational (Minecraft is like legos!) and gives mom/dad a break.

• When the child is 7-10, Christmas comes and someone gets the child a video game system.

• Parents implement the rules they grew up with, which are some variations of

  • Homework gets done first.

  • Firm time limit.

  • No video games on a school night.

  • No violent games.

• Over the next five years, those rules will get fuzzier and fuzzier. The child, it turns out, is pretty good at wearing down parents who are already stretched thin. The child begins to play on school nights and for longer periods of time, then gets to play their first “violent” game (I mean, they did watch Avengers, so they can “handle it”).

• Around the age of 13-16, the parent knows something is wrong and tries to step in, but receives major pushback. It doesn’t seem worth the effort, so the parents start to say things like,

  • He’s a good kid.

  • He’s doing well in school.

  • He still plays sports.

  • Video games are how he connects with his friends.

  • Etc.

• The parents see their child less and less and start to go days without meaningful eye contact. It’s not just video games, but also the natural processes of growing up and the general distancing of late-teen children. Yet, the 3+ hours of video games a day has become routine and doesn’t even seem odd anymore.

• At 17-20, the parent has “had enough”. They know something has gone wrong, and the hours and hours with a controller in hand are a part of the problem. The son/daughter is to blame because they’re lazy and unmotivated. Why haven’t they applied for college? Why don’t they have a job? Why won’t they get their driver’s license?

• The fights between child and parent get uglier. Either they’re growing louder and louder, or the child is shutting down more and more. Everyone feels a strange helplessness.

Understand What We’ve Done

If anything about that progression above sounds familiar, please keep reading. What is coming will be hard, but it is so important.

Whether parents understand it or not, putting a video game in the hand of a child (or a cellphone, for that matter) is simply handing them a drug. I’m not being dramatic.

Video games have progressed to the point where they are often dopamine machines (much like social media). They have the ability to (literally) change our brains.¹

That doesn’t mean they need to be avoided entirely. Caffeine is a drug but I’ll still share a root beer float with my children or split a bit of dark chocolate. It does mean that I engage with video games with a significant level of intentionality and care.

What I’m getting at is this: If we have an adult child who has a clearly unhealthy relationship with video games, it’s almost certainly because we were their unknowing dealer.

We handed dopamine machines to a child or teen that could never have used wisely, then our primary tactic was setting up a reward system that deepened the addiction (finish your homework first! If you do x again I’ll take video games away for a week!).

Why are we surprised when our little addicts grow into big addicts?

Note: I use the word “addict” with a more social and nuanced connotation, rather than a clinical definition.

Start With “Sorry”

We cannot help our adult children heal and mature if we refuse to take any ownership in the problems they face.

As parents, we didn’t mean to and we weren’t being malicious, but we gave a small child a dopamine machine. A drug. It’s tough, but we need to understand that the addict living in our home is one we played a part in creating. It doesn’t mitigate our children from needing to take responsibility, but we have to acknowledge the major barriers to growth we put in their way.

Whatever conversation (or intervention) that needs to happen, it must begin with parents understanding what they’ve done and being willing to say they’re sorry.

It’s a great irony to me when I talk to a parent who wants so bad for their child to “grow up” and “take responsibility for their life”, while that parent can’t accept responsibility for the role they played in the child’s issues.

If we can’t take responsibility, we can’t assume our children will.

Final Step

Beyond I’m sorry, the only thing left is to remove all video game consoles and computers from the home. If someone has an unhealthy relationship with alcohol, the answer isn’t “let’s set up some better ground rules for drinking margaritas”. The answer is “no alcohol in the home. Hard stop.”

Games are the same way.

That means the younger sibling who has a perfectly fine relationship with video games will suffer too. That’s sad, but not as sad as watching an addict unable to recover. In fact, it’s a good time to talk to the younger sibling about suffering for the sake of others, a foundational part of following Jesus.

It Just So Turns Out…

These ideas for parents are simple and can be summarized by saying,

• Understand the part you played

• Apologize for your part

• Remove all gaming

But simple doesn’t mean easy. In fact, I don’t think most parents will do this because it largely means confronting past mistakes and suffering for them by experiencing the hurt and wrath of their adult child. I don’t say that judgmentally, just as a reality.

We’re tired people. This culture weighs us down and few of us are retreating to the Father the way we know we should. Deep down, we understand why our child retreats to video games. You likely have a retreat too, whether it’s Sunday night football, Facebook, news commentators, or whatever else.

Consider a teen boy whose life is filled with news about school shootings, exposure to porn on his social media feeds, the pressures of school, a looming adulthood ahead, and growing up watching mom and dad glued to their phone screens. Why wouldn’t he hide inside a virtual world where he has control and agency and where he doesn’t have to think about the world and the future?

Yet, we—as adults in discipleship to Jesus—know that retreating will only bring longterm pain in exchange for a short term relief.

It just so turns out that the only rational response to handling the vast complexities and pains of this world is to turn our eyes to Christ and follow Him in radical discipleship. How else could we really see the chains of addiction (of any form) broken from ourselves or others? Where else do we get the strength to apologize meaningfully, to forgive others, to bear with our children in their failings? How else do we confront our own shame and keep going, if we can’t see that our shame has been nailed to the cross?

It may seem strange than an article on “parenting adult kids with a borderline video game addiction” concludes like this, but where else do we go when we feel helpless? We can’t just kick our kids out—we know that even with a good job they couldn’t afford an apartment in this economy? But we also know our child isn’t healthy and that we, ourselves, aren’t really the model of health we pretend to be!

It’s too much, it’s overwhelming.

And so, we must go on by “fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith. For the joy set before him he endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. Consider him who endured such opposition from sinners, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart,” (Hebrews 12:2-3 NIV).

Ask your child for forgiveness. Extend forgiveness to your child. Take radical steps to fix what’s been broken. Trust God.

This is part 5 in a series on “A Theology of Video Games”. To see part 1, click here.

1. Check out this article for kids that is actually very helpful. Feel free to use the references in the article to go down a long, long, rabbit hole.