Requiem OR screen-time?

     Recently I got my son's second quarter report card and mid-term grades, and he has slipped a bit.  He's still a good student, but while first quarter we were close to straight-As... Well, now our son is a solid B+  student.  L says that it's all good because, since he's in honors classes, they'll add points to his grade point average.  He'll be a straight-A student anyway -  

     I don't want to go down the "you'll never get into that university with these grades" route.  And I could so easily see any sort of recrimination from his father and I turning into either a defensive argument or the loud clang of closing mental doors as L refused to listen to anything we had to say.  So, I decided to approach it positively; said we were proud of L, that he is a good student, but that this was a moment to reaffirm an old policy that somehow wasn't being implemented:  no video games from Monday to Thursday. 
     Seriously, when the year started that was supposed to be a policy, but anyone who knows my son knows he's a "gamer."  In my opinion, although he has never consistently played long long hours, he is an "addict."  That sounds judgmental, but it isn't - I just mean that video games give him some very deep emotional reward and, thus, he craves them. 
     When the year started and L was on the soccer team, there was no need to restate the M-Th gaming black-out.  The kid was incredibly devoted to the team - never missed practice - even pulled his friends out of bed on Saturdays to practice on their own.  He was exhausted, but he was doing it all - including schoolwork - with a remarkably positive attitude.
     After soccer ended, slowly but surely, the games came on during the week.  L would even bring kids home from school with him to play which made me  more tolerant.  Once, I found him home with friends on a day when I had warned him that I'd be home late.  hmmm.  Instead, I got home just a few minutes after school ended.  (That evening husband and I emphatically say to son: no friends in house if nobody is home...  But, seriously, it's another case of one of those "rules" that L chose to ignore until it was made very explicit and very emphatic... and now?  Is it now black and white enough for him?)

     Thus, it's not so ironic that after the incredibly intense first two months of the school year ended, my son began to fail to turn in homework...   When I belatedly realized that there was a homework issue, I just said that if there were any more missed assignments, I'd put the "nintendo in a box."  There weren't any more problems - but the report card... like I said. 
     So, no more gaming during the week, and L. took it well.

     Still he has more freedom than his older brother did to play at least at this age.  That is, if chores are done on the weekend, I try to let him have some autonomy over what he does.  TRY being the key word.  It's always a struggle for me.  Now, to make things worse, he started doing a social networking site (which I refuse to name here) and that's another chunk of time that gets sucked up in front of a screen.
                    I CAN'T STAND IT!
     My resolve to let him make these decisions for himself snaps.  I snap, "You just spent hours playing! You can't (blah blah)  It's bad for you!"  I'll say, "You have five minutes."  Then, 7 minutes later, I'll go up the stairs and just turn off the modem to cut the internet connection.  Ha ha - our kids think we are incredibly ignorant because we have this dinosaur internet system, but having these technical limitations on how much internet anyone can use is a real blessing in a way.  In our house, only one of us can connect to the internet at a time.

      Bottom line: I'm torn between the guilt of why can't I let my son be(?) and why do I allow too much gaming/screen-time(?).   The former means asking myself, "Am I turning my son into someone who will play constantly when he no longer has supervision because, by my taking that decision out of his hands, he develops a deep Pavlovian response to the use of his time: freedom = NOT getting up from the screen?" (Gasp - a long question for the guilt-ridden.)
     BUT... there's another part of me arguing, "His brain is so elastic now, you have to create conditions for him to 'program it' to do different things! Make him turn off!"
     For example, on Saturday evening, when I finally cut him off (I had been in the city all day), he sat down at the piano to learn a new piece (Requiem for a dream).  On Sunday, when I snapped, he went back to the song and practiced it over and over.  One part of me wonders, would he have devoted all that energy to the song, had I allowed him to make the choice?  It's not like I'm sure of the answer, but there's an image  ...
     (When they make the movie this should come after a special effect that shows the screen get all shimmery so everyone realizes it's a dream) At 11:11 pm, L rubs his blood-shot eyes - the dark rings under his eyes are silent testimony to sleep deprivation.  He finally realizes that it's late and he's stiff and groggy from having sat at the screen all those hours - and, even though he downloaded the music to the song, he decides to leave it for another day...  then another... Eventually he decides to take an axe to the piano in his room to fit a t.v. and gaming system in there.  Oh, God, it's so tragic!
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Back to reality. . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . .
     Last night, when he got home from a Sunday evening choir practice after 9p.m., he ran up to our bedroom (we have the computer) and got on line.  I was really firm, "No, L, you can't log-on...NO, absolutely not..." and L just ignored me. I let it go when he said that he wanted me to listen to Requiem for a Dream.
        His father came up, and sat back down to work, but didn't stop the song and L was soooo into this music, playing air violin, singing, pacing.  (The air violin, by the way, is hilarious - almost as funny as his dad's face as he tried to do serious work on the computer with the screen blasting out this music and L belting it out behind him).
     In my enthusiasm for his enthusiasm, I said that we should get the movie from Netflix... L told his father to put in on our queue.  This morning I looked it up, and it is really really intense and full of adult situations.  Sure, it has an anti-drug message - but it sounds pretty traumatic.  Shit - now I have to stall (for a year or two) or find a way to get that song so that I can get out of ordering the movie.  You see, I'm just incapable of a laid-back attitude.  I'm destined to try to fight this losing battle over control.