How to Raise a Healthy Gamer: End Power Struggles, Break Bad Screen Habits, and Transform Your Relationship with Your Kids

A former gamer and Harvard trained psychiatrist offers a proven, tested plan to help parents define, set, and reinforce healthy boundaries around video games and help kids who have developed an addiction to gaming.

When it comes to family rules around video games, most parents are at a loss. How much should I let them play? is always a parent's first question, but when their child becomes irritable, rude, or seemingly directionless, the question becomes more urgent: Help! How do I get them to be interested in anything else?!

Known as “Dr. K” to his millions of followers, the former Harvard Medical School instructor and founder of the unique gamer's support resource Healthy Gamer, Dr. Alok Kanojia has firsthand experience with video gaming and addiction: He needed professional help to break his own addiction in college, and his parents had very little guidance for how to help him. Written to fill this resource void, How to Raise a Healthy Gamer provides parents with critical information about gaming culture, how games affect developing brains, and solutions rooted in the science treating addiction, including:

• The neuroscientific and psychological reasons that children gravitate to video games and how addiction develops.
• Step-by-step guidelines for setting, enforcing, and troubleshooting healthy gaming boundaries.
• Essential strategies for reaching kids who have developed a serious gaming problem.
• Special chapters on behavioral issues that often accompany game use: ADHD, spectrum disorders, and substance abuse.

Whether a parent’s goal is to stop addiction or just promote healthy habits, How to Raise a Healthy Gamer will help them better understand, communicate with, and—ultimately—nurture their children.