I will never forget the day I came home from work, excited to take the family out to dinner. It had been a long difficult period at work without a lot of upside. My wife had gotten very good at coupon shopping and feeding our family on a tight budget. But today, was a great day. We'd signed a big contract and I was finally feeling better about our future. I wanted to take everyone out for some delicious Mexican food.

I told her to "get the baby." She told me to get our oldest. He was sitting in the living room playing Madden on the PlayStation. I sensed my wife hestiate at the foot of the stairs. She did not go up right away. She was watching me. I was not immediately sure why. All I was doing was grabbing our son.

Or so I thought.

When I told my son we had to go he didn't move. I thought he couldn't hear me. I get really focused when I watch TV and play games, so I expected no less from him. So I got closer, put my hand on his shoulder, and as I was about to say, "let's go to dinner..." he shrugged me off. That of course immediately raised my hackles. What had started out as a simple errand quickly turned into a contest of wills. A contest I was not about to lose. Again...

Or so I thought.

I told Ryan to turn off the game. He was winning by like a gazillion touch downs. I don't know where he learned how to change the settings so he could blow out his opponents, but I knew he was a smart kid. What I didn't know was that he was about to lose his mind. He grunted at me, not even a "give me a minute dad." He treated me like an annoying fly. Well, I know how to use a TV remote so I grabbed it and switched off the TV.

I was not prepared for his reaction. He had a full... blown... complete... nuclear... meltdown. Now I knew why my wife was standing at the foot of the stairs. She was waiting to see how I handled this. I vaguelly recalled her telling me something about having a hard time getting Ryan to stop playing video games, but at the time I had shrugged it off. I mean, don't we all have a hard time putting down something we enjoy? But this was different. This was not just a "hard time" My boy, who I love with all my heart and who I am as proud of as a father can be, was having an absolute conniption. This was beyond anything I had ever experienced before as a parent.

In that moment, I realzed a couple of things. First, I could suddenly relate to all those parents who talked about banning video games from their home. But I couldn't ban video games. I made them for a living!

I was absolutely stunned that something meant to create joy, and connection had lead to my son losing emotional control over himself. It was at that moment, I realized I needed to understand exactly what was happening to him and why. In short, I needed to find a way to manage his video game time, and his emotional connection to games, so none of us, not my wife, not my son, and not me, ever had to experience this kind of uncontrolled tantrum over a video game ever again.

I can't say that I actually completely stopped my kids from getting frustrated with video games, (or myself for that matter). We are human. However, I was able to use my inside access to game developers, designers and engineers to better understand what was happening and why. What's more, for me, video games are a form of applied psychology. That single, uncomfortable day, propelled me into understanding how to manage my children's video gaming, so they could get the best that games had to offer, while at the same time, not letting the technology take over and rule their lives.

Together my wife and I learned and practiced three core ideas.

First, how to end video game time without a fight.

Second, how to manage game time to maximize our childrens safe social emotional development.

And finally, how to talk to our kids about their game play so that we helped them develop a growth mindset, and built an identity where each of them, in their own way saw themselves as the kind of person who solves hard problems.

It was a few years later that a friend relayed a story to me, very similar to the one I just shared with you that he asked, since I was in the video game industry, if there was anything I could do to help. I quickly rattled off my three principles and he looked stunned. He said, "How come nobody every tells parents any of this?" That became the impetus for my talk called Cheat Code, a Parents Guide to Video Game Secrets.