We continue our series of Self-Reg Talks from past summer symposiums with this two-person discussion of video gaming by Vicki Parnell and her adult son Calum.
If you’ve read or heard Stuart Shanker thoughts on video games you’ll know that he’s not a fan. He’s argued that video gaming is a significant stressor for today’s children and youth due to, among other things, visual overstimulation and energy depletion caused by the way games keep kids in high states of arousal.
Yet, the reality is that gaming is a big part of many young people’s lives (including some of the current generation parents) and it’s not likely to go away anytime soon.
Vicki, a Self-Reg Consultant, who administers our Self-Reg Parenting Facebook Group, enjoys video games herself. As for Calum, like many young people, gaming is a pretty big part of their life. So for avid gamers, the realistic Self-Reg question becomes how to think about manage gaming with a view to how and when it affects one’s self-regulation.
In their discussion Calum and Vicki go back and forth about how gaming has affected their self-regulation (including some positive ways) and how Self-Reg has helped them learn to look at gaming differently. In particular they share how they’ve learned to recognize when gaming has become a maladaptive mode of self-regulation and what they do about it.
There will be many more interesting Self-Reg Mini Talks happening at this year’s Self-Reg Symposium. You can watch Vicki and Calum’s full mini-talk below.
