Parents Webinar: Understanding Games, Gamers and Game Dependency

Update on 9 May (Mon) 9.20am: All the tickets available are taken up. If you will like to come for the webinar, you can put in your name and email under the waitlist. When someone cancel or give up their ticket, you will be notified to confirm your ticket. For ticketholders, if due to unforeseen circumstances can't make it for the webinar, please do cancel the ticket so that another can take your place. Thank you and have a great week ahead!

Update on 28 Apr 2022 (Thu) 11.30pm: Within a week, we have 500 registrants for the Parents Webinar. We have decided to go up the next tier to 1,000 people on Zoom Webinar. Thank you so much for each and everyone who has shared with your friends and network. 🙏🏼 Now that we have more capacity, please do continue to spread the word to your family and friends who might find this helpful. 😊

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We are running the 5th edition of our Parents Webinar: Understanding Games, Gamers and Game Dependency this year! We are thankful for Tencent's support to be able to make this webinar free for all.

In 2020, we had 2765 Singapore secondary school students complete COMEBACK’s Game Dependency Test. 19.4% of the students have game dependency, with 4% being significant. This means that one out of five teenagers in Singapore have some form of disruptions in their lives related to gaming. To read the full report, go to https://www.comeback.world/2020/10/08/game-dependency-in-singapore-secondary-school-students-2020/

Games are here to stay and will be part of our lives. Complete embargo of games for your child and youth will mean social and technology isolation. This is not possible when students are required to go online for some school classes or assignments. On the other hand Game Dependency is a very real challenge for many parents. Yet, game dependency is rarely on the clinical radar as a cause or contributor to educational or behavioural difficulties for which psychological services were being sought as compared to attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), conduct disorder, obsessive compulsive disorder, oppositional defiant disorder, insomnia, and mood deregulation.

For this Parents Webinar, we seek to equip parents with frameworks to help parents better understand games, gamers and game addiction, which we termed game dependency. With better understanding of games and your child’s gaming motivations, parent-child communication and relationship can be improved. Developed from the understanding of a youth's brain development, various communication strategies will be examined. We will also do a brief introduction to neurofeedback intervention that is noninvasive and non-medication-based, that can help programme the brain to achieve greater mastery over ineffective or dysfunctional behaviours, i.e. game dependency, poor relationships, etc.

Date: 21 May 2022 (Sat)

Time: 10.30am – 1.30pm

Venue: Zoom Webinar

NOTE: A unique link will be emailed to you to join the webinar. Please sign up using the email address you use for your Zoom account. Otherwise you might have problem logging into the Zoom webinar as the zoom links are linked to the email provided during registration. 

Cost: Free

Special and sincere appreciation to the follow parents group for your support for this webinar and all the work you do for the parents:

• Dad@CatholicHigh, Catholic High School
• Parents' Support Group (PROED) Hwa Chong Institution
• Chapter Zero Singapore
• Parents Support Group Geylang Methodist School (Secondary)
• Mum's Space
• Yuying Secondary School Parents Support Group (YYSSPSG)
• Chung Cheng High School (Main) PSG

ABOUT THE SPEAKERS

Nicholas Gabriel Lim

Nicholas Gabriel Lim is the principal psychologist and a board of director at COMEBACK.

As a registered psychologist, he has worked with youths for 2 decades. He is the co-founder of the Youth Work Association (Singapore), a clinical supervisor to young budding psychologist, a youth mentor, and an author of the book Parents’ Playbook for Helping Youths Succeed and the ebook Understanding Adolescents, both under the main theme of Clash of the Mind and Heart.

He has spent his career in the people, private and public sectors. All of which have been with youths, families, and advocates of youths.

Given his depth and breadth of work with youths, he has been on various government advisory councils, like the Media Literacy Council and the National Council for Problem Gambling.

Nicholas not only has Degrees in Psychology from the University of Queensland and the Nanyang Technological University, but also various clinical and practice certificates like for Youth Work Coaching and Supervision, Choice Theory and Reality Therapy, Adventure Therapy, and Therapeutic Behavior Management, just to name a few. He is currently reading law.

In his free time, Nicholas enjoys reading a good book and heading to the gym. Together with his beautiful wife, he has three children. He lives by his favorite mantra, a life well reflected would be a life well lived!

Nicholas Lim's Website: https://nicholasgabriellim.com

Ruth Lim

Ruth is on staff with SOOS OIO as an Esports Coach and co-developed TeleTrip, an offline gaming community event. She conducts DOTA 2 foundational classes and workshops for Esports Academy under SCOGA and also teaches the module “Team Management” in Informatics Diploma for Esports and Game Design.

Ruth Lim coached a competitive DOTA 2 team TenTwenty in 2017 that won CPL Championship DOTA 2 Edition 2017, came in 1st in Dew Challenge 2017 and represented Singapore in Asia Pacific Predator League in 2018. Ruth managed Team Impunity FIFA Online 3 who got 3rd in EA Champions Cup (EACC) Winter Cup 2016 representing Singapore. In 2017, she coached Team Impunity FIFA Online 3.

Ruth graduated from Temasek Polytechnic with Diploma in Games & Entertainment Technology and SIT-University of Glasgow in Bachelors of Science with Honours in Computing Science. She also holds a CoachSG coaching certificate.

Well recognized in the DOTA 2 community, Ruth attended numerous international gaming tournaments, got to know and learnt from many of the top players worldwide. Ruth hopes to share her knowledge and experience to gamers in Singapore and beyond.

Poh Xing Yong

Xing Yong is an Associate Psychologist with COMEBACK. He has struggled with game dependency since Primary school, and now aims to help others overcome their similar struggles in game dependency using his past experiences and background in Psychology. He has completed his Psychology Degree (Honours), and is currently pursuing further studies in Counselling Psychology to further hone his skillsets.

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Our May Programmes

Following up with the Parents Webinar, we are doing the Parenting Challenge Workshop: Communicating & Engaging Gaming Youths at Home through Role Play.

This 2-hour workshop is a follow-up to our Parents Webinar. During the Webinar, communication strategies and theories on games and gamers were introduced. The application of the strategies and theories in a real-life family situation is not easy. Role play is a good tool to help contextualize the strategies and theories for home situations and deepen the adoption of strategies by reenacting them in a safe environment. For example, role play is used to rehearse the diffusion of difficult situations to prevent confrontations that can jeopardise parent-child relationships. COMEBACK psychologists will put out common scenarios in families and through role play to illustrate the application of the strategies and theories discussed.

The sessions will be conducted by COMEBACK Psychologists Nicholas Gabriel Lim and Poh Xing Yong.

SESSION 1:

Date and Time: 22 May 2021 (Sun) 5pm – 7pm

Venue: Suntec Convention Centre, Level 3, Summit Rooms 1-2

Limited to 20 registrants

Register here: https://pcw2022-1.eventbrite.sg

SESSION 2:

Date and Time: 28 May 2021 (Sat) 10am – 12pm

Venue: Heartbeat@Bedok Class Room 2

Limited to 10 registrants

Register here: https://pcw2022-2.eventbrite.sg

SESSION 3:

Date and Time: 29 May 2021 (Sun) 10am – 12pm

Venue: Heartbeat@Bedok Class Room 2

Limited to 10 registrants

Register here: https://pcw2022-3.eventbrite.sg

Cost: Free

We are very thankful for the support of Tencent in making this possible.

TeleTrip Festival - Bonding with Family and Friends through Video Games

We are kickstarting this upcoming June holidays with TeleTrip Festival where we gather families and friends to play three popular video game titles, Pokemon UNITE, Brawl Stars and Roblox: Super Striker League. The three game titles are family-friendly and a great activity to bond.

TeleMatch is a friendly tournament with a positive culture to reap the benefits of playing together. We encourage parents whose children are already playing these games to form a team with their child and participate. The rules of TeleMatch are designed to create a safe environment for teams and players. Parents can use the TeleMatch rules to inculcate good gaming habits. There will be an online Zoom briefing a few days before TeleMatch so that parents and teams know what to expect.

TeleTrip Festival is a hybrid event. Registrants can choose to play onsite but slots are limited. Our Esports coach will be onsite to provide very brief team coaching after every match for teams that are playing onsite.

Click on the respective links to go to the event page for more details and registration.

Registration Deadline: 15 May 2022 (Sun)

21 May 2022 (Sat) 3.00pm - 6.30pm - Pokemon UNITE https://www.teletripgaming.com/events/telematch-pokemon-unite-21-may-2022/

22 May 2022 (Sun) 10.30am - 1.30pm - Brawl Stars https://www.teletripgaming.com/events/telematch-brawl-stars-22-may-2022/

28 May 2022 (Sat) 3.00pm - 6.00pm - Roblox: Super Striker League https://www.teletripgaming.com/events/telematch-roblox-28-may-2022/

29 May 2022 (Sun) 2.00pm - 7.00pm - TeleTrip Festival Finals