Greetings,
My 8 year old son - who is moderately gifted - is doing really well at school, both socially and academically. We've been incredibly lucky with his schooling, despite the fact that it does not have a separate programme for gifted children. Often, when he gets home, he reports that today was 'the best day ever'.
On the other hand, when our son is at home, he is sometimes bored to tears, literally. We have a 2 year old son who has very different needs than our 8 year old, and it's often the case that the younger son gets more attention on our household. It saddens me that I cannot devote equal attention to both of them, but I have to make sure that the younger child is safe, etc. Of course my husband and I try to ensure that each of us pays attention to one of the children, but for whatever reason, there are times during the day when that is simply not possible.
So our older son is allowed to have 2 hours of screentime per day on the weekends. He's become really enchanted with minecraft, and now he wants to play it all the time. He agrees to the time limits we've set in advance; however, when it's time for him to turn it off, he screams and cries. And it's not just your normal crying for what we would think is a normal amount of time. Last weekend, he scream-cried for an hour before calming down.
So there are two issues that I feel we could use some advice with.
1) the whole minecraft game. Is 2 hours too much? Or are we being too strict about it, and should we simply allow him to play it whenever there's a lull in activity, rather than a set amount of time?
2) the scream-cry. This started when he was about 6 years old. It feels aggressive and directed towards us, his parents. It's difficult to not react to it, because it certainly feels as though he's the one punishing us! I am devoted, however, to allowing my son to have his feelings, and I try not to judge. But the scream-cry is very loud! VERY loud! And I worry that this type of emoting has more to do with expressing anger than sadness and that there's something fundamentally wrong that we've missed. Do any of you experience the same sort of crying?
