How to Raise a Healthy Gamer

Is your child spending too much time playing video games? Or are your children begging you for screen time and you don't know how to help them establish healthy tech habits? Are games causing conflict and arguments? Whatever brings you here, I can help. How much should I let them play? How do I get them to be interested in anything else?!Video games and managing screen time are a modern parenting problem with no blueprint and a rapidly changing landscape. Harvard-trained psychiatrist and former gaming addict, Dr Alok Kanojia – Dr K to his millions of followers – offers a proven, tested plan to help parents define, set and reinforce healthy boundaries around screens and video games. From communication strategies and advice on dealing with behavioural issues to the neurological reasons behind why tech is so addictive, How to Raise a Healthy Gamer is essential for parents of children of all ages. Based on Dr K’s own experience with gaming addiction and his neuroscientific and psychiatric expertise, this is an accessible and engaging eight-week, step-by-step program covering how to react when your child becomes irritable, rude, or seemingly directionless around screens. Specific advice is also offered for parenting neurodiverse children, including those with ADHD and autism. Written to empower parents with knowledge and practical advice, this guide from the foremost expert on video game psychology provides skills, offers hope and sets out a clear road map to building healthy gaming habits that will equip your child for a fulfilling future.

Of all the questions parents ask me as a child psychiatrist, the most common one — by far — is how to handle their children’s use of screens. This groundbreaking instant classic of a book answers that question definitively. Clear, persuasive, and rooted in the most current research as well as the wisdom of the ages, How to Raise a Healthy Gamer is the book you’ve been looking for — not only for your child but for yourself as well!, In homes everywhere, negotiations around gaming are tiresome and heated. Dr. Kanojia’s approach allows your child to be part of the solution — a valuable component to both reducing the combativeness that often accompanies these negotiations and to staying in close relationship with them. I highly recommend this calm, structured, and nurturing approach to better and less screen use., Among the most important decisions we make about our parenting, screen use and — in particular — gaming will define our family. This groundbreaking book will give you what you need to come to an informed and sensible resolution that works for you. It’s a book that will give you the strength to live within your values and that will support your hope for a family that is deeply connected., Games of all types offer people of all types opportunities to learn, be excited, and grow. But when playing video games stops adding to your child's life and instead, starts taking away their relationships, opportunities, and overall well-being, you need Dr. Kanojia. Complete with scripts, milestones, rewards, and boundaries, this book will walk you through every step of the process to build an alliance with your child, helping them learn use their gaming strengths toward fulfillment in the world beyond their console.

Dr Kanojia, known widely as 'Dr K,' is the foremost expert on video game psychology as Instructor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, a private psychiatrist working with esports professionals, and the cofounder of Healthy Gamer. He has first-hand experience as an avid gamer, struggling with video game addiction as a teenager and young adult. Despite having loving parents who tried to help – they simply didn’t understand what they were dealing with – after two years of college, Alok was achieving grades far beneath his potential. There were simply no solutions, so he first traveled to India, where he embarked on a seven year journey to become a monk. After years of dedicated practice to understand the nature of desire and overcome his own addiction, Dr. K transitioned away from a spiritual life, conducting neuroscience research at Harvard Medical School for two years. He ultimately went to medical school at Tufts University School of Medicine, and completed his psychiatry training at Massachusetts General Hospital and McLean Hospital (Respectively the #1 and #2 top psychiatric hospitals in the US) and Harvard Medical School, where he continues to teach about video game addiction. After helping gamers in his clinical practice, Dr Kanojia started Healthy Gamer, an online digital mental health platform that helps gamers and parents achieve healthy video gaming habits.Dr K’s Healthy Gamer psychoeducational content reaches 3-5M people monthly on YouTube, and his Healthy Gamer Coaching program has helped nearly 10,000 people all over the world take control of their lives. Dr Kanojia’s Healthy Gamer programs have been proven to improve the parent-child relationship, improve mental health, and reduce addictive gaming. How to Raise a Healthy Gamer is a distillation of the most universal themes parents contend with combined with the most effective, most impactful practices from Dr Kanojia’s evidence-based programs.