Weetzie, you can have the cell phone company remove the texting capability from your daughter's phone. The phone works fine, they just cannot text or send photos. Big deal! It helped us alot. I would really like to know if there is a contraption which will turn off the computer at a certain time. Does anyone know?

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My 14 and 15yr old sons are add/adhd, we have video games and computer games. They have always been limited. My husband is deployed and it is getting harder and harder to get my boys to get off in the set time frames. It is almost impossible to get them to get off and becomes a huge fight most of the time. I have stopped arguing with them and have started flipping my power breaker some days just to get them off. It may not be the best thing to do but honestly, I am at a loss. I have taken it away for weeks and they have earned it back but then when they earn it back we just take it away again. I am just glad to know I am not alone.

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Gretchen - thanks for the response. I've told my daughter that if she cannot get the texting under control, she will loose the privilege entirely because I will take it off. Although she has ADHD, she is better able to regulate herself than my son so I believe she will cut it back. In fact, she told me last night when I made her stop texting (and told her I would check on line to confirm) that she really enjoyed talking to her friends instead! We'll see...As for the computer, you can set controls on it. If you are the administrator for the computer, you can set up other users and it cut off their access to the internet when you want. I'm not sure about turning it off completely but you can even set limits as to when they can use the computer. Good luck.

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I thought I was going crazy with thinking that I was wrong in seeing the things my son does after playing video games. As of this weekend, my husband and I have instituted some of the ideas all of you wrote about. We haven't talked about during the weekdays yet except that he is not allowed to play games in the morning before school. I have let the babysitter in on this one as well. He has 4 things that need t o be accomplished before he can play video games for 1 hour on each of the weekend days. His room needs to be clean, the playroom needs to be clean, his homework needs to be done, and his chores need to be completed. We figured that we have the control of hour long he plays, but he has the control as to if he plays. His attitude and behavior also come into play with his being allowed to play and he was completely off the wall with defiance yesterday that he has lost games for the weekend. He says he doesn't care, but I know that losing them affects him as well. Thanks for the input on not giving him the games at all. The month, month 1/2 that he didn't play them due to sneaking them into his room at after my husband and I went to bed and playing all night, the defiance outbreaks were alot less. He has been allowed to play video games once for 1 hour, and the defiance has increased two-fold. My husband keeps talking about taking away all the video games in the house (playstation2, gamecube, our DS and the kids' gameboys), but we can't see punishing our 8 year old daughter who doesn't play them as much and doesn't have ADHD. The games systems are technically mine and he doesn't ask to play them unless he has friends over, which is very rare anyway. Please help with this one.

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My son got at DS at Christmas and hasn't been able to get to sleep at night for hours since then...He was has really been complaining about being tired and not being able to think and not being able to do math, which is his strength. At first we thought it was because he was very sick for a week at Christmas, or possibly the meds he was taking for cough.

He is not playing all night, because the DS is upstairs at night. I just figured out that just playing the game in the evening provides so much stimulation that he can't stop thinking about it, and can't sleep. He usually plays 30-60 minutes before school (which gets him out of bed and dressed without a struggle) and another hour in the evening after homework.

Also we have to limit him to E or E10 games except Age of Empires, which is T.

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Because of mouthing off and other reasons, my son lost extended use of gameboy and video games through April. However, because his behavior was excellent the last three days of spring break, my husband and I decided to let him have use of his gameboy for the trip to/from his grandfathers (which is an hour long trip?, so he played 2 hours in total yesterday. Today I have been noticing an increase in not being able to control his behavior and mouthing off this afternoon. The Gamecube and PS2 are going away tonight as neither of my kids play with the systems. He still has to have his room clean, play room clean, homework done, and chores completed in order to play. I would love to be able to pull gameboy from him forever, but without a doctors backing I know I'm just going to get extreme mouthing off, etc. from him. Can anyone give me ideas or a website where there is a doctors (or professionals) backing about children with ADHD?

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I'm wondering what kinds of games are your children playing?

The increase in oppositional behaviour/mouthiness could possibly have to do with the type of game... them getting "into it" and the brain is "excited".

It could be that getting them to STOP playing is hard for them to accept, and thus the increase in mouthiness is due to the reaction to the battle that follows when time is up. They could be staying in the foul mood - which consists of being defiant and mouthing off - because they had to stop doing something that they really liked.

Try to pinpoint exactly what is causing the incrase in the undesireable behaviour. it might not be the video game playing itself, it could be the stopping that's hard for them to accept.

Just out of curiosity, have your children tried those games that help with memory attention etc, like Brain Age, Big Brain Academy? I had one for my Nintendo DS, and lost the whole system (someone who found it is VERY happy... oh well.) but I found that Brain Age is really fun, makes me think and helped with attention and processing information.

For the parents trying to deal with the lying about homework...one of the things with ADHD is being prone to addiction - or another way to put it persevering at something. You just zone out and do something for hours. For me it's being on the internet (ironically) or crocheting/knitting... I lose track of time. It's not healthy when it interferes with having a productive life, and if the homework's not getting done, then it's definitely not productive.

Keep sticking to your guns and don't give in! Emphasize that school is first priority, and it might come down to keeping in touch with the teachers about assignments. I work in a high school and parents e-mail the classroom teachers all the time to make sure their kids have the assignments done.

Take away the game system, with the explanation that the school work has to get done. If there's temper about it, then maybe leave it to the weekends. See if they can suck it up and deal with the frustration of having conditions being put on their access to games. Part of living with ADHD (speaking from experience) is learning to "suck it up". Part of being a teenager is learning to "suck it up". Yes, it does suck. But in life you have to deal with things that you're not happy with, schoolwork is priority.

:) Awesome parents who are on here asking for help though! shows you care!

WOrking with kids in high school, I find myself thinking how much high school did suck... I agree with them a lot when they complain about things, ironically, it seems to help them feel better.

Good luck :)

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My husband and I have noticed that the mouthiness of our son increases every time he plays Pokemon. We are going to try taking Pokemon away to see if that has anything to do with the amount of mouth we usually get. Also, we have really stuck to our guns about him completing the chores and homework being done before he can play. However, we have now added the stipulation that he needs to do these things without any fights. I'll let you know how it goes.

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We had a real problem with video games about a year ago. My four boys would play the x-box games like star wars, lord of the rings, ect. They would always end up fighting and arguing with each other. "You just killed me!" "You're making me lose!" They also became addicted to the games and lost their zest for life. Everything else in life seemed dull in comparison to the video games. I became fed up with the games one day and said that's it! I sold back all the violent games to Gamestop and told them we have too much contention in our home. They were left with two sports games and one race car game. They are no longer fighting and they play very little (maybe an hour or two a week). They are outside every day for hours and there is so much less contention. It was a hard decision but worth it to me. Our new rule is no violent games whatsoever. We explained why and gave them examples of what can happen when people play these kind of games. How are they going to learn to interact with people and have good social skills if they're plugged into violence half the day! They need to be with real people, solving real problems in a positive way. I'm still very glad about the decision!

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