Available at 
Tweet
We have been fairly open about letting the kids use their devices without having any problems. For the most part, the kids control their own internet use.
Our problem is our 14 1/2 year old. His grades have dropped substantially this year and he is spending half the day/night on the internet playing minecraft, etc. Last year, this would have been easy for me to fix. I would have set the timer on the compute for him to 2 hours and that was it. This year, he got a laptop from the school. All of his notes and assignments are now on the computer and all assignments are to be turned in via schoology. There are few old-fashioned paper and pencil assignments anymore. His grades truly bite and he has multiple missing assignments. We tried taking his laptop (took an act of Congress and was ugly) and then 1 hour later he announced that he had a powerpoint to complete. We let him back on in the kitchen to do this and it took him forever. I don't have the time to stand and police him and couldn't always check what he was doing.
It is extremely difficult to get him to give us HIS computer. :/ It's a real battle. Everytime we have it, he makes the argument about his assignments being on it, etc.
We tried removing internet access for the whole household, but that affects other people in the house who need to be online. Amanda, for example, is rarely on the computer, but needs hers for access to schoology's dropbox and for doing her own assignments. Aidan has a math program online. It gets annoying to be flipping the router on and off. I thought about creating a guest account and only letting the kids logon via a guest account each day after chores/homework is done, but Thomas is worried we would forget the daily password and lock ourselves out of that option.
We are turning off the router at 10 so that he can't be on after that time....but I need help. He is truly addicted and can't control himself. How can I take control here?
Kris
Our problem is our 14 1/2 year old. His grades have dropped substantially this year and he is spending half the day/night on the internet playing minecraft, etc. Last year, this would have been easy for me to fix. I would have set the timer on the compute for him to 2 hours and that was it. This year, he got a laptop from the school. All of his notes and assignments are now on the computer and all assignments are to be turned in via schoology. There are few old-fashioned paper and pencil assignments anymore. His grades truly bite and he has multiple missing assignments. We tried taking his laptop (took an act of Congress and was ugly) and then 1 hour later he announced that he had a powerpoint to complete. We let him back on in the kitchen to do this and it took him forever. I don't have the time to stand and police him and couldn't always check what he was doing.
It is extremely difficult to get him to give us HIS computer. :/ It's a real battle. Everytime we have it, he makes the argument about his assignments being on it, etc.
We tried removing internet access for the whole household, but that affects other people in the house who need to be online. Amanda, for example, is rarely on the computer, but needs hers for access to schoology's dropbox and for doing her own assignments. Aidan has a math program online. It gets annoying to be flipping the router on and off. I thought about creating a guest account and only letting the kids logon via a guest account each day after chores/homework is done, but Thomas is worried we would forget the daily password and lock ourselves out of that option.
We are turning off the router at 10 so that he can't be on after that time....but I need help. He is truly addicted and can't control himself. How can I take control here?
Kris
He agreed to this limit. Then, we put a marble for each hour in a jar. When he used an hour, regardless of when he used it (evening, weekend, whatever) I took out a marble. If he went 10 minutes in to the hour, it rounded up - so 1 hr. 10 minutes = two marbles. When the marbles were gone, the device went away for the rest of the time in that time period. We never had to get to that point, though. He ended up not playing at all during the school week to save his hours for binges on the weekends. Fine with me. Of course, he always had to have his schoolwork done as well.
Comment