Serious Little brother's videogame addiction = family problems

Gabe

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My little brother has clearly become addicted to Uncharted 3 at only 10 years old, and plays/does nothing else unless I literally strike a deal with him that I'll let him play Uncharted 3 for an extended period of time after. At his age, I was a victim of being addicted to certain videogames and now, I regret it. I don't want him to go down that road so I'll let him play a few hours of Uncharted until it gets extreme, then ask him to do something else. He'll then proceed to kick/scream and whine like a little toddler until I literally have to snatch the game and hide it somewhere, which causes him to retaliate and steal my shit, etc. etc.

Anyway, this keeps escalating to the point where I keep telling him he's addicted and needs to at least balance it out with other games or do something else. My dad is a bloody Sarah Palin when it comes to videogames (I'll get to that in a moment) and my mom doesn't understand the stuff, so they naturally don't know how to get my brother to manage his time spent on it. They don't understand the slightest bit. You should have saw me try to explain to my mom what it meant when my brother was 'deleting my save games off the PS3 because I applied a parental control password to the game'.

Now, it's gotten to the point where I have applied the parental control and told him he can't play it for the rest of the day. (Already played it for a good 3-4 hours of that day) He will throw remote controls at me, steal my games and threaten to break them, and in this recent incident, I directly confronted my mom and told her about my little brother being violent and stealing my stuff, as he was in the process of infiltrating my PS3 profile in the basement. I explain to her how I'm trying to get him to do something else by prying him off the thing, and then my dad comes in and starts going off about how I'm being violent because of 'violent videogames' (which, according to him is what I like to get off to, not true.) and sparks up a whole arguement about how it's all my fault that my little brother is addicted and acting this way. (Even though he picked up this addiction on his own, I never 'recommended' the multiplayer to him.) I start cursing at my dad because he's running his ignorant mouth about videogames and violence and starts treating me like I'm some sort of demon that wears dark clothes and is going crazy because I'm overheated. (I'm wearing a fairly thin, blue plaid long-sleeve shirt.) Now there's a feud going on my family between me, my brother and my dad mainly because I keep trying to tell off my dad about the whole violent videogame shenanigans. I just can't stand for that type of ignorance. It drives me up the wall and grinds my gears... you name it.

If you want to compare me to my brother, just for a better perspective, you can see what games I play in my signature, and you may notice I really like to mix it up. I don't play the same game all the time and I haven't been addicted to a game since I was my brother's age. I don't play games all the time, but I do spend lots of time on my computer, talking to friends, making artwork or just chilling on the internet.

All I tried to do was get my little brother to stop wasting his time playing the same game day after day, and now my dad thinks I'm in the same position as my brother + believes that playing a T-rated game (Uncharted) is going to make me want to shoot up a school. I've had it and I can't stand it.

How can I tolerate this?
 
Do what my parents used to do to me and my brother when they didn't want us playing video games. Hide the controllers. You have to ignore the retaliation, etc. If you give in, obviously it doesn't do any good. Setting the parental controls is a good idea. Just have to have rotating passwords or something. If there's something you can take away from him other than the game, that would be good too. Like "If you don't limit yourself to 2 hours a day, I'll no longer do this for you." But really, I'd go hard line, take the system away, and say if he can't handle it responsibly, he doesn't deserve to play it at all.

There's not really anything you can do about your dad, as he's just blame shifting. Either he'll see the light or he won't.
 
Maybe you could take him out to a park or something and have him play ball with you or watch as he plays on a playground or something? Getting him out of the house where he isn't sitting there twiddling his thumbs might be a good idea. When you're bored and you've got a videogame system sitting there you're likely to want to play it.

He's 10, he should be outside playing, not spending hours on videogames, you're his big bro, so take him for a walk to a park/beach/whatever is near your house. I am sure there is something close by!

Otherwise everything Jesse said above.
 
Do what my parents used to do to me and my brother when they didn't want us playing video games. Hide the controllers. You have to ignore the retaliation, etc. If you give in, obviously it doesn't do any good. Setting the parental controls is a good idea. Just have to have rotating passwords or something. If there's something you can take away from him other than the game, that would be good too. Like "If you don't limit yourself to 2 hours a day, I'll no longer do this for you." But really, I'd go hard line, take the system away, and say if he can't handle it responsibly, he doesn't deserve to play it at all.

There's not really anything you can do about your dad, as he's just blame shifting. Either he'll see the light or he won't.

I assume it's your playstation. Like Jesse said, ignore the retaliation, you can never say it's going to work because everyone responds to a different kind of logic, but most of the time you just get more worked up and fueled if someone talks back.

"Can I do this?!"
"No!"

The no in that alone gives them motive. "But why?! Why not?! Why are you allowed to play and I'm not?!"

Stating because they're addicted will only cause them to become in denial.

Ignore it. Continue your game, lock your door. You are not forced to spend time with your little brother on your own system. You are not forced to spend the time you want to spend alone with him. So spend the time you are not playing your ps3 with him, then if he asks about it you can just say you aren't up for it. Or if he wants to play state you're going to play yourself in a minute.

Obviously you tried the kind and no ignoring way, try the opposite. Limiting him is another option, take something away and reward him if he behaves, however, a lot of kids get the hang of that soon, and start being nice so they think they deserve extra time.

It's just really not an easy situation to be in, but I hope you can get something sorted.
 
I always make him "deals" (that I touched vaguely upon).

For example, I absolutely forced him to plow through Ico and Shadow of the Colossus (because IMO, he'll get more out of those than by playing UC3 all day), and told him if he played a decent amount of those games every once and a while, he could get some UC3 time. He already finished both of those (after months of THIS sort of thing) and I keep trying to get him to play other good games as well. He always complains games are too hard, so I try to get him to play older-generation games back when the difficulty wasn't so timid.

It's getting pretty much impossible to get him to play anything else but Uncharted because pretty much ANY other game is too hard, because he's so used to jumping around mindlessly, aiming and shooting. It doesn't help that the PS3 is in my open basement which is a large room that consists of MY computer, HIS computer, a couch and the HDTV + the PS3. This basement is the entertainment HQ of my house and is one big open room, so it's shared throughout the family. Everyone in my house uses the PS3 at some point, my parents watch movies on it and my brother does... you know. The parental controls I set don't affect DVDs or Blu-ray movies, which is good. Hiding the controllers/the system will only prevent my parents from using it and cause other big BS, but I DO hide Uncharted 3 on him when he plays it far too much and he starts getting violent about it.

but the thing I can't solve is, I hide Uncharted 3, he ends up stealing one of MY things that I can't really get to fast enough. Usually the games I'm PLAYING most of the time. I don't want to go through the annoyance of always having to hide a bunch of my games every time I'm not using them, because that's ridiculous. He'll go for my Xenosaga disc and take it right out of the PS2 and hide it somewhere, along with even some of my FRIENDS' games that they let me borrow. If I didn't want him stealing my stuff, I'd have to literally hide dozens of PS3, PS2 and PS1 games which would require a treasure chest the size of a refrigerator. (Maybe I should get a lock-able compartment to store my games + valuable possessions in)
 
Well.. To me that kid needs a little bit of discipline. He seems to be kind of wild.. I dont mean beat him up but atleast punish him to the point of him getting the idea that doing something bad will have consequences(no physical punishment but things like hiding what he likes..make him unable to play completely for a few weeks maybe and do what other people said about taking him outside,etc)! And to prevent him from damaging your stuff just hide them in a safe place. Try to get something with a key so he cant open it. Also...if you dont want to forbide him completely from playing just take away uncharted and introduce him to other games such as final fantasy :D . Now regarding your father oh well.. Folks can be really closed-minded and sometimes stupid, you might aswell deal with the problem yourself.
At some point I was a 12 year old kid a bit like that regarding world of warcraft.. My brothers dealed with me pretty well I guess!
EDIT: Perhaps you could make a little sacrifice and stop playing games for a week on the PS3 so if he complains you say that you are not also playing games on it.. I dont know your brother seems a little troublesome.
 
The thing is though, from my understanding, his addiction isn't just Uncharted, Uncharted just caught his interest, by forcing him to play other games, he might very well get addicted to one that comes along, what you're doing is kinda... playing with fire I feel like? If he likes that game then playing it should be a reward. He's ten, I'm sure he has homework, I'm sure he has friends, make a deal with him for 3 hours a week. That might seem harsh, but let him play 30 minutes a day, a few days in between, an hour the next, etc, etc. 30 minutes, hour, 30 minutes, hour. Also not every day, there should be days he should be OFF the Ps3, the system is the problem, that's basically what's taunting him to play Uncharted, he knows that's what he plays Uncharted WITH.

I hope you can see what I'm going with here. You say that you forced him to play other games, he might be young, but he's not stupid. "Why would he allow me to play other games, even force me to, but not let me play Uncharted?" Your answer would be, 'cause you're addicted, he'll just end up trying out the same thing with another game you DO let him play more often. It's very contradicting...
 
dont you think its a bit stupid forcing him to play other games in its place? the result is him still sitting there in front of a computer for too long, it makes no difference what the game is, and if you do the same, even though you're 'mixing the games up' i dont see any difference. Seems like you need to get him to step away from the computer and have a set amount of game time each night. Just take something away he needs, like a control pad or a cable

On the other hand, why would he listen to you? youre his sibling, not his parent, hes twice as likely to retaliate because he wont see you as having the right to tell him what he can and cant play, especially if he then sees you playing/internetting for hours at a time. Its not the game itsself that is the issue.
 
I guess you are right... It was a stupid idea to suggest that.. Oh well you really need to try to convice your parents to make your brother stop playing altogether for some time or restrict it way more.
 
Don't make deals. Give bottom lines. He'll always find a way to work around your deal and get what he wants. That's why you don't give him things when he does what you want. You make him do what you want, or he loses things. Consequences, not promises. It's harder with a 10 year old, as they really don't have as much stuff that theirs alone, but you should be able to find something.

Like Kira said, you may have to sacrifice yourself a bit. Not play a system for a week or whatever. Also, I don't know your parents, but I imagine that if you tell them he's stealing from you, they might take a different stance than they are.
 
Lend your U3 to a friend or trade it in, move out and take your PS3 with you, failing that take all the disks out of the cases and put them in a multi case and lock them in your room, seeing as your the only one who plays these games this is the way forward.

Your little bro sounds like a little bit of a brat tbh, sounds like he always gets what he wants.
 
Pawn it/sell it on ebay/amazon. He needs to know that not just one person is suffering for it, but you both are. Basically you need to set a strong example. Eventually all the moaning will die down, and you can both do something outside.
 
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