My son asked me this morning “What comes to your mind when you hear the word addiction?”
Well… disconnection, I said, and my heart sunk a bit deeper.
We have been talking A LOT about gaming and screen time in the last year. Like a lot! It has taken us so much energy to even find the rational non-anger driven or fuming state to sit together and dissect what is happening in our life, and how gaming has become such a hotspot in our family.
I paused this morning. Something felt different.
“So glad you asked” I said. “Let’s watch Johhan Hari’s Ted talk about it. You know daddy and I got to meet him and we even spoke about research with him”
He perked up.
It has been increasingly challenging to engage him and pull him in so that he can actually hear us. It’s been so hard to try as see myself not as a preacher, a lecturer…
As Clarissa Pinkola Estès wisely advised us “there comes the time when we as parents have got to stop lecturing ans start encouraging”. This has kept my hope for connection alive. Especially during those moments when I felt like gosh am I losing my child to gaming?!
Hari makes such a well rounded compelling case about addiction and how it’s a response to disconnection.
Lots to learn. Lots of work to do to reconnect. And to always bring him back to our world. Which is worth it.
His comment after we watched this: “I am not an addict. I have my rat park!”
With love
Aleks
Aleksandra Staneva, PhD 