PS2@4AM

I woke up this morning at 4 a.m. and saw light coming from my sons’ bedroom. They never shut the door completely because they want privacy, yet they are two of the scariest boys on Earth. My oldest(ten years old) had a friend sleep over last night and I instructed them to turn the PlayStation 2 off at midnight, which I witnessed. Sometime through the night, if he went to sleep at all, my ten year old turned the ps2 on again and I caught him with the control in his hand having an intense playing moment. When he noticed I was standing there, he just looked at me from under the cover with nothing but his head and arms showing, probably thinking of a good story to explain why he had the control in his hands. I would have believed he fell asleep with it in his hands, yet since his eyes looked as if he just saw the boogie-man, he was out of luck. I always knew he was addicted, yet not to this extreme. I thank God I recognize his addiction because I don’t want to be harsh on something he obviously can’t control. My husband and I purchased the ps2 and it is something he truly enjoys better than eating and sleeping! This is the computer/video age and we could have simply kept him the dark, yet we chose not to. This is my opportunity to communicate with him on another level and find some other things he is interested in that I may not be aware of. Surely, something else is out there he’d like to give some of his time to. I know he enjoys drawing, reading, puzzles, and building things, yet nothing has been able to compete with the lights, colors, and sounds from the ps2 games...graphics at its finest! Baseball takes up a lot of his time, so maybe that’s why he was up at 4 a.m. That’s it! He never has time to play! No, no, no, I’m beginning to rationalize. My son is addicted to video games and it MUST be addressed. If you’ve recognized you have a video game addict, please share!