Coming from a mother of three ADHD children that have also been identified gifted………… your son sounds very similar to my son. In Texas, the first school assessment for gifted identification occurs in 2nd grade but it is a standardized assessment. Most parents can request in writing an request for a review. I suggest your son be individually tested (WISC IQ test) Video games are an outlet and can certainly teach children but at the same token, your seems to have a high IQ to process what he is doing. His creative nature is apparent and shouldn’t be downplayed as just learning this from his video games. The video games may have just given him confidence in his true ability and allowed his potential to shine through. Just food for thought. Read up on gifted kids, that frustration is actually pretty common among the gifted………… You should check out the book, how to light up a child’s mind by joseph renzulli. He even addresses ADHD & the gifted.

I do agree that playing video games has helped my Asperger’s son with many of the positive things you mentioned. He has become much more coordinated (often somewhat lacking with children in his predicament). He has latched onto the concepts in his math class more fiercely than before. Video games give him something to do where his awkwardness doesn’t matter. He can beat almost any game put in front of him within a day or two. For him, video games level the social playing field to something where he is respected. However, for all the reasons you mentioned–plus my own–I have started limiting both boys’ gaming to supervised sessions of 15-30 minutes. Of course, the real fights come when that length of time is not long enough to finish a level. I have had to get tough and take the games away anyway.

I landed on this website when searching ‘my child is obsessed with computers’ because I wanted to find out what other parents thought. I do not think my sons are old enough to make decisions about how they should raise themselves (i.e. in front of a computer). However, I do not want to suppress my older son’s need for doing something he is really good at. It is said that a large number of the people in Silicon Valley may have Asperger’s. If I deprive my child of the chance to really learn computers, he may miss out on a potential career choice. What I am seeing from your post confirms my suspicions, though. Unsupervised gaming is a whole other beast–bringing out the beast in my child. Obviously, too, using computers or learning to tinker with them and playing video games are not the same thing. I never see him acting ‘crazy’ when he is using Google on my computer.

Thank you for some valuable observation to validate my own. Parenting is apparently ever-evolving. Best wishes!

I think it’s definitely worth reintroducing – but as you said with limits. But I wouldn’t say time limits are the way to go. Take note of his activities – let him play as long as he likes as long as he does a physical sport, does his homework, interacts with friends and gets a good night of sleep. Some days are longer than others.

You’ve taken an approach to this many parents won’t, a well thought out one.

my parent’s cat see that & if they can they are not doing anything about it i ha8 them for that they are so ignorent i know that because i can con them into doing/buying me anything like i bought a ps3 & a x360 and they did not even know about it & i bought a new pc by telling them that the old pc was not workin & cannot be fixed …… & i did not see any sort postives in me .. all i see is the negetives idk what to do? or who to ask? . i just started playing batminton & uninstalled all the games that i had & this is the good part no one force me to do that i made that decision on my own se what i have to do i have to take desisions on my own or my life is scrued !!

Making the hard decisions is a parents job. My 13 year old hates me today because I won’t let him ride on the streets piggy back on his 14 year old friends new motor bike, go figure?

I am a serious gamer, have beta tested quite a few over the years, and sometimes I wish My Dad or Mom said enough already, the new boss will still be around tomorrow, take a frigging shower already, LOL!

If your son truly loves games, perhaps you should encourage him to learn about what goes into their creation and implementation. Regardless of whether he ends up doing something games-related, if it would spark an interest in the sciences and disciplines involved, it would be beneficial to his education. Furthermore, if he is motivated to pursue any of these sciences, he will gain discipline through his learning.