The thing
that is on my mind…
…the most these days
is kids and screens. I hate them!
Screens, not kids… Anyway, hardly a day goes by in the past month that I
haven't seen an article about how screen time is rotting kids brains; making
them lazy, moody, and unimaginative. And
sadly, I see it first hand…in my own home.
I take them away and all of the sudden it's like a zombie invasion. They wander around the house moaning, as if
they don't know what to do with themselves.
What have I created???? Monsters, that's what! It all started with the first computer I ever
bought. When our oldest was about three I put her on it and introduced her to
learning games. Back then it was just an
interactive cd-rom. It was wildly
successful. She loved it and I did,
too…because she was learning! Win-win,
right?! Well, I do believe it contributed to her being a successful reader and
even a spelling bee champ. But what
really made the difference was…ready for it…*drum roll*…books! How about that? We read…a lot. Sometimes at night, while tucking her in, I
would lay on her bed reading to her and I would even start to doze off. I read the same books over and over and over
again. Once in awhile, if I was in a
hurry to wrap up the nighttime routine, I would skip over a page or two. She caught on. She never let me cheat.
But now, it's all
about electronics. iPhones, tablets,
computers, smart t.v.'s….so. Many. Screens!
And I just want to get back to good ol' fashion books. I want a trip to
the library to be an outing, a field trip, an adventure. I don't want discipline to revolve around
taking away a screen. I had this fantasy that learning could happen naturally
and the screen could do the work. That
was lazy on my part. And now, with a
couple of my kids, books are the enemy.
Reading is apparently a punishment. I even heard one say to the other
recently, "why are reading a book, it's Saturday". As if reading was only for school hours! What the heck????
So, where do we go
from here? They're not going to like it,
but the screens are being taken away. Not entirely. I'm giving the older ones
more freedom. I like them to have a phone
to contact us when they are away from home.
And we do still have t.v.'s. I
like watching movies just as much as they do.
But today when I saw that our couch has a worn spot from one kid sitting
on it TOO MUCH, that tipped the scale just a little bit further.
There's groans,
there's anger, there's frustration…but at the end of their childhood, they will
not look back with regret and say, "I had a lousy childhood, my parents
made took away my screens and I had to read books".
