Image: Flickr user Janet

Minecraft is an incredibly engaging and complex game, loved by millions of children. Many parents have asked me, should children with ADHD play Minecraft? These parents have observed the ways their children become very focused and sometimes obsessed with playing Minecraft.

Our team at LearningWorks for Kids recently had an opportunity to present at the annual International Conference on ADHD presented by CHADD (Children and Adults with Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder) in Chicago. Dr. Gary Stoner, our research director, and I presented a three-hour workshop entitled, Should children with ADHD play Minecraft? The Pros and Cons of Technology Use for Children with ADHD. The 60 participants in the workshop watched videos of children constructing vast structures in Minecraft and asked dozens of questions about the video game play of children with ADHD.

Many of these workshop participants shared stories about the skills that their own children were learning from Minecraft, but had concerns about how effectively the skills might be applied to academic and real-world problem solving. We focused the workshop on helping parents and educators translate the skills used and learned in Minecraft in order to apply them to the real world. We also spent some time discussing effective limit-setting on video game play (particularly Minecraft), of children with ADHD.

Take a look at the full PowerPoint presentation from the CHADD conference. To learn more about how to help children benefit from the skills used and learned in Minecraft, take a look at our playbook. You might also be interested in our limit-setting article, How Do I Get My Kid to Stop Playing Minecraft?

Featured image: Flickr user Kevin Jarrett