Video Games & Your Kids is for parents who are worried that their children may be spending too much time playing video games. Based on research and the authors’ clinical experience, the book explains what gaming addiction is, how much gaming is too much, and the effects gaming has on the body and brain. The authors give gaming advice on each stage of life; birth-2 years, ages 2-6, elementary school years, adolescence, and adult children still living at home. Where there is a problem, the authors provide parents with tools that will help the parents successfully set appropriate limits for their children. It also explains the need to consult with professionals and use the process of formal interventions when the addiction is so severe that the parents are no longer able to manage the situation.
What others are saying:
This much-needed book provides both information and an action plan for families affected by video game worries. For others, it should serve as a large red flag signaling the importance of awareness and prevention of an insidious sickness among our children.
— Jane M. Healy
Author of Failure to Connect: How Computers Affect Our Children’s Minds and What We Can Do About It
This book is a tool that every parent should have when rearing children in modern society; helpful and insightful, amazingly practical, and completely indispensable. Thank you for writing this, everyone should read it even if they’re not concerned about video game addiction; this is distilled parenting at its best.
Recovering video game addict
Finally a very overdue book about a serious, emerging problem of computer addiction and the effect of computer use on children and youth. It is a comprehensive source book, well written, easy to follow, in the context of child development that every parent and concerned person should read.
— Katarina Cernozubov-Dogman, PhD
Founder of the Unicorn Program.
It’s about time someone wrote a real, easy to read, honest book about the risks of video gaming, a problem that’s not going away. It’s a spot on look at something so common it scares me.
— Jay Parker
Author of Sex and Love Addiction: My Journey from Shame to Grace
In our “Information Age” it is all too easy to make provocative statements about video games and the Internet without backing them up with knowledge and experience. Hilarie Cash and Kim McDaniel provide both knowledge and experience in their timely book, Video Games & Your Kids: How Parents Stay in Control. Based on their knowledge and experiences as psychotherapists, they share vital signs and guidelines gleaned from adolescents, teens, and adults, who, for a variety of reasons, became functionally addicted to playing video games.
Video Games & Your Kids can help parents realize they are not improving their children’s lives by allowing them unlimited access to video games. Signs of addiction, along with effective tools for dealing with children who are displaying unhealthy behaviors are included, but just as importantly, why video games and the Internet can be so addictive is also explained. It is my belief that video games and the Internet have extremely useful roles to play in education and society, but their dark side and limitations must also be understood. This book provides an important part of that education.
— Ruth Fruland, Ph.D., Education
Human Interface Technology Laboratory