I don't think you are being too harsh. I have the same problem with my difficult child. He gets too into his DS that I had to take it away from him. He was getting up in the middle of the night to play his ds and go on the computer. I had to password the computer and my laptop. We started a ticket system with difficult child and younger easy child. They have to do things for tickets to earn computer/ds/video/tv time. If they do basic stuff like brush teeth, make bed and several other things with out being told, they earn a green ticket. It is worth 15 min of video/tv/computer time. If they have to be told to do those things they earn a white ticket which is worth 10 min. We have meetings every week to discuss how things are going and to make any changes. We have not been doing this for that long and just came back from vacation, but this seems to be working for us. We will tweek it as we go, but we had to do something. I was tired of telling them all the time to do simple stuff like brush their teeth or clean up after themselves. We hope they will do more without prompts and maybe help me out. I should not have to clean up after these two. They are 14 and 10 and should do most of this stuff without being told. It drives me nuts! My husband is with me on this, but I deal with the kids more so it is up to me to enforce this. I hope this is some help to you. I do hate having to take the video games away from them, but they cannot be trusted.
