In a late afternoon of heavy rains , what does a nine year do after school and after all the homework has been done ? Watch TV ? Definitely not ! He’s bored watching TV. He wants to do something that requires assembling , kept looking  around the house and searched his toy cabinet for anything that might keep him busy before dinner time. When he can’t find anything that he can play with , he begged me to allow him to play computer games for an hour or so.

I told myself as many times in the past , killing the time and boredom with computer games is not a good idea. It is highly addictive as in the case of my son. In my experience, computer games distract my son from his studies. He can’t focus on his lessons  and spends more time on it rather than doing more productive work like improving his reading skills , helping with the home chores , engaging with social and sports activities with kids his age. When I’ve  realized that this machine has taken hold of my sons life, I decided to cut the period of time he’s supposed  to play , definitely not  on regular school days, only on Saturdays for  a few hours only. The decision has paid off, it made him more diligent with his studies and became self-diciplined than ever. He’s got more time now to engaged in worthwhile activities like art lessons ,  gardening , Cathechism classes and social activities with children his age. After all the begging to allow him to play, I’ve decided to give a firm NO for an answer.  He gave up, went straight to his room to read and draw . Just about in the middle of making himself busy , Dad arrived with five boxes of microwave dinner and three packs of self -assemble dinosaur skeleton sets. A big smile flashed on his chubby face and he immediately began to open  the packs and assembled the skeleton sets.

It took him twenty minutes to assemble three sets and felt so proud of his work which he added to his collection to dinosaur toys.

He arranged the three completed models on top of  the dresser before bedtime. One more thing, he loves puzzles, he’s quick with the smaller sets but takes days , on installments to complete a set of 500 pieces.