Our son will be 33 years old this year. He doesnt have a driver's license, dropped out of college, has never been engaged or married (or in a serious relationship, at least not since college) and has been living with us for the past five years. He has a decent career, but by his own admission it is not the one he had envisioned for himself. He just "fell" into it and, since he is extremely bright and personable, he has done very well in the profession that has chosen him.
Meanwhile, his younger brothers move on in life: one is married, one is going to college, the other is a struggling musician. All have had relationships, adventures, travels, struggles and joys and interactions with people outside of work, in the REAL world.
He was a brilliant, happy boy who excelled in school. He was never an athletic type, but it didn't seem to bother him, since his dad is not an athlete. He enjoyed swimming, camping and dogs, had good friends and charmed most of his teachers. Being the first-born son and grandson, he was lavished with attention, but not spoiled because we were on a tight budget. We gave him his first Nintendo when he was 10 years old but we made sure he balanced his time.
He won a scholarship to college and was on the dean's list during his first and second years, but sometime during his third year, his grades faltered and he dropped out. Looking back, we realize that this is when he must have gotten sucked into the world of gaming.
He got a job and lived on his own but didn't pay his bills on time. His dad kept helping him out financially, unknown to me at the time. He kept telling us he wanted to go back to college but months turned into years and this never happened. He blamed lack of finances and time. Eventually he moved in with us, saying he was finally going to get his college degree. We agreed, with conditions: he had to be gainfully employed and pay us a small amount for rent. He has kept his part of the bargain, but again, years flew by and here he is: no driver's license, no college degree, no significant other. He works, comes home with a bag of horribly unhealthful snacks, basically retreats to his room and does his online gaming through the night and into the early morning hours. It's a wonder he can wake up for work! He has gained an alarming amount of weight and frankly, I worry about his health.
Mostly, however, I am profoundly sad. This is not what I envisioned for my bright, witty boy. I don't think he is happy at all, and that is primarily what his father and I have wanted for our sons: to have happy, productive, self-sufficient, FULL lives. His life is passing him by and I am powerless to help, and it's such a ****ed waste. I love him dearly, and this kills me inside. At times I when I am alone, I weep for his lost youth and the man he was supposed to be.
Hi Melly and welcome to Olga-non. As a mother myself, I can understand the pain you must be feeling for your son. We want so much for our kids and it's so hard when we see them not living up to their potential.
As an addicted gamer, I can also understand what your son is going through and how the game takes over our lives and becomes the most important thing to us. Unfortunately, the gaming addict has to come to the realization on their own, how gaming is destroying their life, before they can reach out and get help to stop. This is the hard part, however, and some gamers can go on for years without realizing. I gamed excessivly for 8 years before I was finally able to stop and in the last year of that time wanted to stop, but couldn't.
If you would like to learn more about addiction, I would highly recommend reading "The Addictive Personality" by Craig Nakken. It helps you to understand just what he's going through and why he continues in this crazy lifestyle. In addition, there is tons of information on this website that will help you as well. I do hope you can find the support you need here and that your son can find his way out of that destructive lifestyle.
Nobody can go back and start a new beginning, but anyone can start today and make a new ending. ~Maria Robinson
Think you for your story, it helps to see the death that will inevitably happen to all gamers.
I'm going to be blunt but mean no disrespect or insult. An addict is living in your house, and I think people call that enabling. If this was crack, the place where they buy/sell/make/live drugs is called a crack house. Does your son buy gaming in your house? Do they use gaming in your house?
Well ok more intelligent people then I with children experience will come comment, take care.
Skopos, I'm glad you made that point. However, as a mother of an adult child, I can attest that it is very difficult to find the line where parenting ends and enabling begins. And as an addicted gamer, I also know that no one can tell another person to "fix" themselves. Melly, your son is 33, and an adult. He's decided to spend his time addicted to gaming. I share your grief in such a wasted life...just as I grieve for the many years I let slip away spending every free minute I had gaming.
Although your situation seems very difficult, it seems to me there is some optimism: Your son is working. He may not be working up to his full potential, but he is working. Not all game addicts do even that. Another ray of hope is that you are reaching out for support. I believe you can find help here at Olga. The people here seem genuinely committed to assisting gamers and their loved ones. Please use this resource....and I will keep you and your family in my prayers. Take care,
ElizabethA
.Left the games behind Tuesday, March 28, 2011...I have a new left knee and a lot more appreciation for the word "recovery"....blessings come in the darndest forms!
.
Welcome Melly! My son is 24, flunked out of college his first year, and is still not living up to what I see as his potential. He no longer plays WoW addictively and does not live with us, but I know he plays games. He does have a job and some friends and does not spend all of his time on his games. I still occasionally grieve for the college experience he missed, especially when I am on our local university campus to see a concert and I see all the students walking by on their way to class or the library, or throwing frisbees on the quad. We made it clear to our son that he could stay in our house while he worked on his Associates Degree, but as soon as he finished, we told him it was time to find his own place and he did. Part of the reason he was anxious to get out of our house is that we made our house a game free zone after he flunked out of college.
You don't have much control over what an adult child does with their life, but you do still get to decide what does and does not happen in your own house, and if the sight of him throwing his life away on a game upsets you, it's time to tell him so (lovingly), and suggest that he find a new place to play his games.
Hugs to you.
"Small service is true service while it lasts. Of humblest friends, bright creature! scorn not one
The daisy, by the shadow that it casts,
Protects the lingering dewdrop from the sun." -------William Wordsworth
Hi Melly. Your son reminds me of myself. I graduated from College, but I'm working at a retail job that isn't close to my field. It never bothered me because I was addicted to games. My advice is to give him a choice: Stop gaming or move out. This might sound harsh, but he is throwing his life away with gaming.
Stopped Gaming: June 22nd, 2014.
Well it must be terrible for a mom to see her son destroying his life. But mom needs to learn how to be a mom. You need to accept the condition your son is in. You cannot change it. I think that mom is the last person who can make her son change. Why? I dont know. I myself have mom. And my mom for me is terrible. She is demanding, she doesnt care about what I feel, she is only interested in if I was at the collage, did I miss any clasess. And I need a support. I have not only mind (in which my mom i highly interested) but also a soul (about which my mom doesnt care at all). So my mome is worried about me because I am wasting my life for gaming. Bu mom must understand that her children make their own choices. I dont understand why you worry so much about him. He isnt little child anymore. You propably cant make him change his behaviour. I havent ever heard of a mom that can do/did anything to help her son in gaming thing. Sorry to be like that but that problem you are talking about is in your mind. You cannot cope with the fact, that you cannot help your son. Thats your problem. To find peace you need to accept the fact that you are actually powerless. You are not responsible for your son, only HE is. Until he suffers he will not change himself. So what he really needs is not a caring mother, but a KICK from life! You understand? Caring mother will not help. A Kick from life would help. Only after a man gets kick from life he starts to think. Mother cant make her son start to think. Only life can do it to him. So dont worry mom. If you want your son to change beg God for a kick for your son. I know its the opposite of what you wish, but exactly why you feel so powerless. Because you dont want for your son to suffer. And you have some ambitions about your son. You have imagined "ideal" a vision of "how it should be". And thats painfull to see that this vision is not fulfillef. Well life teaches us that it isnt a thing were we can order anything we want, like in a bar and life will bring it to us. Life is full of challenges. Being a parent is great challenge. And an addiction is one of the greates psychological challenges a human being can face. First you need to disconnect from the fact that your son have a gaming problem. It is not YOUR problem. After you are dis-attached you can effectively assist him. You cant remain attached and be helpfull to him. The worst thing a mom can do to her son is being attached to his problems. You see--- his life is mixed with yours and first thing you have to do is to separate yourself from him. You should o this just after he was born. When the umbilical cord was cutoff. Only when you realise your son is separate being you can actually help him.... Now about the addiction of your son.... I know that no addict wishes to quit his/her addiction until he/she suffers conseqiences of his/her actions. Addiction is a thing that in a normal way is much stronger than you. It is luring you to act it out. Recently I read many books about addictions and the problem is that this books arent really helpfull. All of them use superficial methods, they rely upon the moethod of strong will, which I highly dislike. I am thinking about addiction and I cant figure out how to cure myself from it. If your son is 33 and you know that he is doing bad by gaming so much you can pray for him, wish him the best and most importantly - you should wish that LIFE will give him an opportunity to change his behaviour. YOU cannot do it. And you cannot defend your son from life, and what life may do to him. Life will surely give him a sign that his addiction is a problem, and as soon he realises that, he will have a chance to change his behaviour, but unless that happens he will still remain in the grip of it. Dear Melly56 I wish I could help you more and give you an advice of how to instantly change your sons behaviour, but the fact that there is no such a thing you can do, I can only tell you to learn to make up with life so that you dont suffer yourself what your son is doing. Anyway. I will stop talking now. I know that the moms life is a hard life and that the mom is most caring being for a child. But mom cant be to caring. You need to remember that you need to have also a distance to things, and you shouldnt demand your life to be perfect, because it only brings paint.
My son is 25 and I believe he is addicted to gaming. He graduated last May with a degree in IT. He was working at a job he had prior to graduating and was unhappy so he quit. He found something else but that didn't work out. He does not live with me. He moved out shortly after graduating. My son has not worked since before Christmas and does not seem interested in finding a job. I have gone through a list of possible causes but ultimately I think it is gaming. I think I have been enabling him by paying for his insurance and cell phone. This is going to stop. I do agree that he needs a kick to make him realize what life is about. The problem is he does have money to live off of. It is a waste because he could use if for a graduate degree or to buy a home if he were working. I know that I can't do this for him. He needs to fall before he can walk. This beaks my heart eveyday and I do worry. The truth is I will always be his mom but his is a man and this is something I cannot do for him baring an intervention. I know how you feel and how this breaks your heart. My situation breaks mine but I think my son needs to be responsible for his own happines just as we all do. I am new to this site and I will be telling my son about it. When he realizes he needs help and is ready to help himself he can come here. In the mean time I guess missery loves company. It is good to know that mine is not the only one and that this is not my fault or his. Thank you for this site.
Hello, Beckaren! Welcome to OLG-anon. You'll find many people on this site dealing with situations like yours. Keep coming back.
Healthy enthusiasms add to life, addictions take away from it.
Thank you all for your support and advice. Silvertabby, I will check out that book asap. Skopos, yes, I do know that my husband and I are being enablers. I have rationalized about our son's situation: "he HAS a job and pays us rent," or "He pays for his own internet and games, so what can we do?" and such. My husband and I have told all of our adult children that if they need to move back in for any reason, they may NOT have buddies over. This is our home, not a dorm. We thought for sure that the "no buddy" restriction would be incentive enough to move (it was for our 23 year old, he moved back briefly to complete his AA degree, quickly moved out and is now attending university in another state) but it didn't bother our oldest.
ElizabethA, Gamersmom and Andrew28, thank you for your empathy and prayers. I have talked the situation over with my therapist and he basically said the same thing Andrew did: tell your son to move out. If he wants to spend his life gaming, it's not mom and dad's business any more, and he can do it in his own place.
Teykey, you're right: I do tend to be somewhat attached because frankly, I tend to blame myself. When he was away at college, I wasn't paying attention. My husband and I were going through a rough patch, plus we still had young sons at home. Thankfully, we made it through, but I think my two older sons might have suffered a bit from our preoccupation with our problems at the time. My husband blames himself too, I think; that's probably why he paid our son's bills instead of telling him to get a second job and take care of business, the way he did as a young man.
I don't know why my husband can't talk with my son about this. it kind of makes me angry that I have to, frankly. I was hoping he would, because it would be more of a man-to-man thing, instead of a mom telling her "boy" what to do. But someone has to do it. I've brought up the subject and my concerns in bits and pieces, most recently when my son and I just happened to be watching TV together and we happened to see "My Gaming Addiction" on Current. We actually started a good dialogue, which is a move in the right direction. I don't know why I feel I need to be "delicate" or tactful about the whole thing, our son is not an imbecile. He's not fragile. Yet I feel like I'm going to hurt his feelings or something. How stupid, huh.
Beckaren, definitely stop paying for the cellphone and insurance. And talk to your son sooner, rather than later. I sure wish we would have confronted our son early in his gaming life, maybe a huge dose of reality early on would have nipped the problem in the bud.
I have decided that I'm going to just take a deep breath tell my son that it's time for him to, a) get his driver's license and a car (he says he has money saved for this) and, b) start looking for an apartment. My daughter-in-law got her driver's license within the span of two weeks, right when she moved out here. She and my son also found an apartment fairly quickly, so there are no housing shortages or anything, and prices are reasonable here. They make less money together than my son does on his own!
I just don't "get" my oldest, I guess. Why doesn't he want to drive? My other sons couldn't wait to drive! Why doesn't he want his own place? My husband couldn't wait to get out on his own when he was young.
Doesn't he miss dating, or going out with friends? Does he feel weird that one little brother is married, and his favorite cousin/buddy is married with a child? And if he doesn't feel like settling down yet, doesn't he want to travel? Visit his old friends back east? Visit relatives in California? Go to England? Why the lack of INTEREST, when he used to be such a curious person? That's what my husband and I can't figure out, our son's comfort with his current situation. Isn't he kind of embarrassed to be living with us, unable to drive?
Sorry I rambled on. Thanks again for all of your advice. I'll let you know what happens.
Why the lack of INTEREST, when he used to be such a curious person?
Because the game takes up all the space, time, concentration, etc that the gamer has. It's like an obsession.
My gaming has cost me a lot, friends, health, almost my education, but that's not important compared to my loss of interest. I became a boring person, not only boring but also easily bored. Because the world seems grey and empty when I was not gaming I gamed even more, not even for the fun (often I didn't enjoy gaming), but just to avoid being bored.
If he is addicted all other things seem less important. And if he feels discomfort when he thinks about living at his parents then there is an easy fix: game more.
the better help i got from my mother was not helping me at all.
If he was addicted to heroin instead of gaming, would that change your mind about asking him to leave?
He's sick (from excessive gaming) but he won't stop if he's enabled. He may not stop if he gets his own place, but at least he would have to earn everything to keep himself going. You're making it available to him, bottom line. At least if he's on his own, he will suffer his own consequences...which does a lot to wake the person up.
Why should you feel guilty taking care of your young sons at home and concentrating on your marriage? If your son was in college and you feel he has resentment over your commitment to the young sons and husbands, that's probably your college age son hanging guilt over your head. Don't buy into it. An addict will do ANYTHING to continue his addiction.