What my son's Minecraft world revealed about PDA burnout

Jake here, Casey’s husband.

I’m writing this week’s email to share a theory I’ve had for a while now - that months before our son emerged from burnout in real life, he beat burnout virtually in Minecraft.

Here’s the full story.

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About a year ago our younger, then six-year-old son William went into burnout. He stayed home in his room, under a blanket and on his iPad, for much of the summer and fall. And to support him through this I made it my mission to meet him where he was at.

That meant a lot of time in his room (sitting on the floor until we faced our reality and bought a small couch) watching kids YouTube and playing Minecraft.

William was already a Minecraft expert. He’d built whole worlds and knew tons about the game from the YouTubers he watched.

Meanwhile I was such a noob I didn’t know the word noob. I didn’t know the controls, let alone the possible ways to advance in the game.

So initially I didn’t think it was at all strange that when William and I played, we just built little houses and put animals in pens around them.

But as I learned more about the game, I saw that there was in fact a whole other side of it. One that required entering caves and battling zombies to get precious metals and stronger armor.

And because I’d gotten bored from the dozens and dozens and dozens of hours I’d spent building houses and animal pens, I wanted to go to these caves and fight these zombies.

But William did not.

Even on weekends, when William’s older brother Cooper joined us and led expeditions into the caves - where he was experienced enough to keep a noob like me safe - William chose to hang back by our house.

And so I did, too. Because my primary goal at that stage was to ensure William felt love instead of shame. He was home from first grade and dealing with immense hygiene challenges, and I knew his self esteem was fragile.

So the only Minecraft fighting I did was against him, and I let him win, over and over and over and over.

And yes, it was boring for me. There were times I nodded off while playing. Sometimes mid-battle.

But I kept playing because I was committed to meeting William where he was, and letting him equalize against me if it helped his nervous system feel safer and stronger.

And then things shifted.

I can’t remember a specific day, because I wasn’t measuring his burnout by what he did in Minecraft. I was watching his real life hygiene challenges and how infrequently he left his room.

But as the weeks passed, he went from hanging by our safe little virtual houses to entering the caves and battling bad guys, to leading expeditions to other dimensions and eventually beating the game’s final boss, the enderdragon.

And it did take weeks, if not months. Some days he was more adventurous in his exploring and fighting, while others he’d stay back by our houses again, battling no one but me.

What’s wild to me is that months later Casey and I saw the same pattern as he emerged from burnout in real life.

He went from almost never leaving his room, to spending a couple hours a day in the living room, to venturing into the back yard, and then eventually leaving the house on real outings.

It was slow, and there were regressions along the way, but now he leaves the house at least once most days (and his hygiene challenges are vastly diminished too).

And so looking back, I realize that long before I could see progress in his real life burnout, he was in fact making progress in his virtual life burnout.

This makes so much sense through the PDA lens that I wish I’d thought to look for it earlier.

As we accommodated and supported his nervous system, it shed accumulated activation, enabling him to do more of the things he wanted to do, first in his virtual realm. Then as his nervous system continued to recover - buoyed by continued accommodations - his capacity expanded to include his real life, too.

Anyway, that’s the theory and story I wanted to share.

I’ve got to go now, as William recently took an interest in pickleball and we’re headed to the local courts. He’ll beat me, just like he did yesterday, over and over and over.