If you asked me five years ago what kind of parent I would be, I would have told you about bedtime stories, soccer practice, and piano recitals. I would have painted you a picture of warm afternoons in the park, the smell of fresh cookies in the kitchen, and my child running in from the yard with grass stains on his knees.
I would not have told you about hours spent in a dimly lit living room, the faint glow of a TV screen casting blue light over a boy’s intent face as his fingers moved with lightning speed over a controller. I would not have told you about the silent battles, the ones fought not with shouting or slamming doors, but with quiet heartbreak and the ache of not knowing what was going on inside my child’s mind.
This is the story of raising AVIGALO, my son, a video game lover, a boy who exists in a shade of grey the world does not quite have a name for.
The greY
When AVIGALO was seven, I started to notice things that did not quite add up. He was not failing school, but he was not thriving either. Teachers described him as “bright but distracted.” He did not cause trouble, but he did not seem to connect with the other kids either.
It was the in-between that puzzled me, the grey. He did not fit neatly into any diagnosis. He did not check all the boxes for ADHD, autism, or dyslexia. Every specialist we saw had a different opinion. Most agreed on one frustrating point: “We cannot say for sure.”
In the meantime, AVIGALO found his refuge in video games. At first, I thought it was just a hobby, something every kid dabbled in. For him, it became more than that. It was his language, his social network, and his measure of achievement.
The “Failure to Launch” Years
By the time he turned 18, the cracks were harder to ignore. His friends went off to college or started jobs. AVIGALO stayed home. His world was digital, rich, complex, and full of victories no one outside his headset could see.
I wrestled with the term “failure to launch.” It felt cold, like a label slapped on a person rather than a situation. Yet there it was, staring me down every morning when I saw him in the same chair, headset on, eyes fixed on the screen.
A Turning Point and a New Path
It was not a big, dramatic moment that changed things. One Tuesday afternoon, I came home early and found AVIGALO online with his friends. He was narrating a game they were building together. He was not simply playing; he was building.
I stood in the hallway and listened as he explained map layouts, game physics, and storyline pacing with a confidence I rarely saw in the real world. In that moment, I understood this was not just a game. This was his arena, his space to create, lead, and thrive.
Instead of pulling him away from the games, we began looking for ways to channel his skills. He enrolled in an online course in game design. We set small, achievable goals: a certificate here, a freelance gig there. Gradually, the digital victories started turning into real-world ones.
Raising AVIGALO taught me that success does not always look the way we expect. The grey is not a void, it is a spectrum of possibilities. Sometimes, our role as parents is not to push our children toward the path we envisioned, but to walk with them on the one they choose.
AVIGALO still loves his games, and he probably always will. Now, they are not just his escape; they are his future. I am learning to see the glow of the screen not as a warning light, but as a beacon.
“Sometimes the path forward is not the one we planned, but the one our children light for us in their own way.”
JANEPHER – CEO
