First of all, please read my previous blog article where my 10 year old has betrayed our trust many times in regard to obeying bans on video games and technology over the last four weeks because of previous issues with behavior including deliberately inputting my pin number to buy games/apps on his Roku box, which he as now lost and taking his sister’s Android tablet and using it after his bedtime.
Today, I catch him using his sister’s tablet again, defying the ban on electronics, not only that, I find that he had set up his own Gmail account, which I have now deleted and he installed an additional four Rovio games, hiding them in a folder with the original Angry Birds as the folder cover icon. Additionally, he had managed to sign his five year old sister upto Facebook, which I found out about because of the Facebook welcome message on my daughter’s Email account I set up on her tablet.
As I cannot trust him to live by our rules, he now has lost all electronic privileges for the rest of 2015. We are even considering a total ban on video games and computers permanently as this video game and electronics obsession continues to cause him to make bad decisions, lying, cheating and even committing fraud in the case of using my pin number to purchase games on the Roku box. This weekend, he is going to spend it in his room without any entertainment apart from his books.
In addition to this, we have found out by looking in his school bag that he has not been doing his homework, and even more stupidly, completed some homework and didn’t hand it in. We found letters and notices going back as far as March 2014, and some of it could have helped him with his autism, but that avenue to now closed because we missed the deadline. Which is frustrating as we have lost our Medicaid funding for him, so he now gets no therapy because of Sam Brownback’s KanCare bullshit!
Update [Jan, 12 2015, 23:22]: At this point we are at a loss, this evening my son got busted again using his sister’s tablet. He had turned down the volume and was hiding the tablet underneath his comforter. My wife noticed he had something under the comforter, at first he pulled out a cushion saying that’s all he had, but when we approached he suddenly admitted that he had the tablet. Now we’re at the point where he has lost his electronics privileges indefinitely as this obsession is so incredibly unhealthy. It’s time to try to channel his energies into something non-technology related!
Update [Jan, 19 2015, 15:06]: After talking with my wife and mother-in-law, we have come to a compromise, my son will get to play for four hours during Saturday and Sunday, he can choose to split that time up or use it all at once. Plus he has the option to earn two hours on Friday evening by helping out with chores, which he is not good at, he never offers to help. For example, today I washed my car and my five year old daughter was immediately out helping me while my son sat there watching TV, sulking because it’s Monday and he can not play video games or use computers Monday thru Thursday.