I think that I have a somewhat different view. My DS8 gets hyper obsessed with different things all of the time. He has gone through phases where he is obsessed with certain books or series of books, or certain events, like the sinking of the Titanic. He has also gone through phases with various video games, or toys, like Legos. He went through a 'Where's Waldo' phase when he was little where he was even dressing up like Waldo at home. It was so cute!
He went through a Minecraft phase where he built some truly amazing things. I didn't really see a problem with letting him build obsessively on Minecraft for awhile until the next thing caught his interest. I actually thought that it seemed rather educational and certainly encouraging of his creativity. For instance, he built a scene where he tried to recreate flags from around the world. By taking the time to recreate the flags block by block on Minecraft, he now truly has them embedded in his memory.
I can't imagine telling my son that if he didn't get his flags built between 1-3pm on Sunday, he'd have to wait until the following Saturday to finish.
He never wanted to play 'survival mode', which is a bit different.
So my question would be, is he always obsessive like this or is this a totally new behavior that you've never seen before?
And if you're truly against letting him have 'screen time', maybe you can get him books about Minecraft so he can read up on the game when he's not allowed to play. And give him a special notebook so he can start plotting his next creations.
