Gambling Gaming Addiction in a Child: Why Does Gambling Addiction Occur? How to fight it?
In some families, unpleasant situations happen when teenagers are excessively addicted to gambling. They play online casinos for money and they spend there all the money their parents give them. And sometimes they take it out of their own savings. Or even start to steal from parents and other people. As a result of such actions, a teenager develops an addiction to gambling gaming.
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Why do teenagers start gambling?
All people play games. It starts in childhood. First, teenagers play monopoly. Then they play bingo, cards. Jinn, bridge, and so on.
Most children’s passion for gambling fades by adolescence. And they begin to do more important things in life. School, university or work.
However, there are also cases when teenagers want something more than just standard family card games. They start playing more serious games, gambling games for money.
They go to online casinos and play slot machines. Hoping that they can “earn” a huge amount of money in a minute. But, as a result, they lose all their savings and never succeed.
After this, events may begin to unfold as follows:
- The child will understand that by playing at the casino, you can lose your money. And will give up on gambling.
- The child will continue to play in the casino. Will hope to be able to win money. However, he will spend even more of his savings and all this will lead to gambling addiction.
Stages of the formation of a gambling addiction in a child
There are several stages during which a child forms an addiction to gambling. Let’s look at them.
The winning stage
The peculiarity of the winning stage is that at first the child often wins money. He “earns” quite large sums at online casinos. And he thinks that he will always will be able to do so.
During the winning stage, the child does not understand one thing. He wins only because the organizers of gambling allow him to do so. They put him on the “hook” of the casino.
With regular winnings, the child not only gets money. But also experiences the real pleasure of playing in a casino. Because of this, gambling becomes a habit for him or even a hobby.
The winning stage is the very first step in forming an addiction to gambling.
The losing stage
Once the euphoria of regular winnings in a teenager is over, he begins to lose all the money abruptly. The organizers of gambling have already “hooked” him. And now they see no need to let the child win.
As a result, the teenager begins to take money to the casino more and more often. Borrowing from friends, acquaintances. Steal from parents. And again, take the money to the casino to win back.
Even if the child wins and “earns” money, he does not think to stop gambling. He takes the amount he has won, puts it back into the casino, and starts playing again, again and again.
As a result, the child’s addiction to gambling increases at this stage. It becomes stronger. During this period, the child begins to feel bad. He behaves strangely. He gets angry all the time. He quarrels with his parents. And does not want to talk to his loved ones. He does not tell his parents what he is doing. Doesn’t reveal the real reasons for his bad mood.
Desperation stage
Having passed through the stage of winning and losing, the child’s addiction to gambling becomes very strong. He no longer has the ability to control himself. All day long he thinks about coming home and going to the casino.
And if he works, he does it in order to earn money to make a deposit on a gambling site. No other motivation for the child’s actions. The only way to rid the child of his addiction – to send him to a psychotherapist. To free your child from the shackles of gambling yourself – quite difficult. And in some cases, even impossible.
How to prevent a child from becoming addicted to gambling?
Gambling addiction appears due to the fact that the child lacks attention from parents.
You have an opportunity to prevent your child from developing a gambling addiction. To do this, you need to do a number of the following steps.
Regularly raise the child’s self-esteem
If the child will have a healthy self-esteem, he will not be prone to play gambling games.
Often teenagers become gamblers due to not have enough love as well as affection, respect and care from parents.
Your task while communicating with your child – to treat him as an adult person. Take into account his interests even if they sound stupid to you. Show love and affection.
By doing everything mentioned above you can form a healthy child’s self-esteem. The teenager will understand that he is a good and promising young man, who is loved and respected in the family.
And thus, he will not have to try to compensate for his self-esteem by playing gambling. Your child will understand that this will only hurt him.
Establish a trusting relationship with your child
A trusting parent-child relationship is very important. If you communicate well with your child, your family will not have any misunderstandings.
If your child trusts you, he will tell you right away if he plays at an online casino or do anything “bad”. You will be able to intervene in time and talk him out of it.
Having a trusting relationship between you and your child will also help if he has already formed a gambling addiction. You can easily talk him into going to a psychologist. And help you get rid of the addiction faster and easier.
Show your child videos that talk about how casinos cheat their users
There are a lot of expose videos on YouTube where bloggers talk about how casinos cheat their users. Show them to your child if he thinks that he can make money on such sites.
Explain to your child that it is impossible to beat a casino. Even if it is an honest service, the child cannot win a lot of money and everything at casino is based on luck only. If the casino was giving away funds to everyone in line, the business would not be so profitable for the owner.
Most likely, the child will understand that it is impossible to beat the casino. And will not want to play gambling games anymore.
Have you encountered a problem with your child’s gambling addiction? Write in the comments how you’ve dealt with it and maybe your story will help other parents.
