Re-Thinking TV Turn-Off Week

Inspired by our local library, we committed to turning off our TV and video (computer) games for a week. We made it through with little complaining from the kids. We nixed movies and computer time and, since we don't do much of those anyway, we hardly noticed.

But the concept of TV-Turn-Off Week is outdated and needs to be re-invented for this brave new screen-happy world. Patents work from home - on computers, phones, & iPads - and accessing of videos for work and education is normal. We have iPhones and iPads that house our communications and music, as well as games and movies and all else. In our house there is a digital picture frame. Cameras are all screen based. Brother-Bug has a hand-me-down iPod that has games on it. We have a TV, but no cable or conventional TV access. We use Netflix and library DVDs for our viewing enjoyments. These kids have seen actual commercial television maybe 2-3 times. We have no video game console, though Papa-Bug does have some games on his computer that are video game-ish. I use the computer not only for writing and work, but to also access a lot of our educational materials.

Where does this leave TV-Turn Off Week? I love the idea, but obviously it's time to re-evaluate how it fits in a world so littered with screens. When I was little we hung a sign on the TV and that was it. The computer with games like pong(!) was in Dad's home office and we just couldn't use it for the week. It didn't bother us that Dad did keep using it for work - screens weren't in such heavy use that we really thought about it.

How to explain the difference between media use as mind-dulling entertainment, a photography project, a writing project...? Kids are on computers daily in schools - how does that relate?
Can we even begin to contemplate turning off the TV when the ease of screen entertainment assails us from so many other quarters? Or an alternate view - does turning off the TV really make a big difference, when there are so many other screens we access?

Over at Adbusters, they have renamed it Digital Detox Week, and I think they have some good ideas, but it's hard to figure out a good way to relate these ideas directly to kids. Ironically, one of their ideas is based on an online video....

I've been turning this over in my head for almost two weeks now, and I don't know what the answer or balance is. Going totally screen free is not practical or possible anymore. No solution or balance has jumped out at me. Thank goodness I have a year to think it though and prepare for next year!

Mindful Monday: Ride the Crazy Wave

It's the holidays. It's festive. It's crazy. There are little people in my world who are so excited they simply cannot contain themselves.

Family comes into town this weekend. We go with my family (all 12 or so of us) to the beach for four days of solid merriment. We get home from that and get ready for Christmas. We don't start coming down until after New Years.

Everything is upset; my housekeeping schedule, my blogging schedule, the kids routine.

My Mindful Monday this week is to do what needs to be done, enjoy the madness, release the blog schedule, but try to keep (somewhat) to the housekeeping schedule. I'll keep posting through the next few weeks, sharing the holiday madness with you all, but I'll do it on my schedule, as I want to or have time to.

Because my real Mindful Monday is to enjoy the Holidays and all the chaotic, glittering, exuberant madness.

Simple Saturday - The Holiday Edition: Adjustments

Over the next month or so I want to share Holiday plans and preparations with you. Of all the things I do as a parent, the hardest to simplify is the Holiday season. There's Christmas, which is a simplicity nightmare in itself. But there is also both mine and Papas birthdays. And my side of the family does a four day beach trip for Winter Solstice. Starting with Thanksgiving, it feels like a tinsel-festooned roller coaster that I cant stop.

I'll claim responsibility for a fair part of the chaos. I love decorating and baking cookies. I love making thoughtful gifts. I want to have traditions sprinkled throughout the month and those traditions take time and thought and energy. But I love it.

What we are slowly learning to do as a family is adjust our expectations - and to help those around us adjust theirs.

After the first Christmas with Brother, Papa-Bug and I realized we wanted some holiday time quiet at home. We stopped going to his parents house for the whole day of presents and movies and dinner and what not. It was always kind of exhausting and meant a day out and social. We want the Little-Bugs to enjoy the mellow pace of the holidays, as well as the familial gaiety. Now we have Christmas morning at home - slow, unscheduled, mellow, and growing our own traditions. We go to Grandma and Grandpa's for a dinner and presents.

This was disappointing for the grandparents, and for that I feel bad. But... These are the holidays and I don't want us to go through them feeling like I have to meet others holiday standards and expectations. It's important that we all feel comfortable and festive. It's important to me that my kids have traditions linked to home.

This year, just this past week, we broke with tradition and spent Thanksgiving with Brother-Bug's God Patents instead of at a grandparent house. It was so relaxing. It was the Thanksgiving I have been wishing for. Close, quiet, no expectations, no historical familial drama... Good food and lots to be thankful for. Added benefit was watching Brother-Bug ground and center the way he does only with those beloved God Parents.

Again, grandparents were sorry not to have our presence and for that I am sorry.

I'm not sorry for taking my family's traditions into my mind and hands, making them into holidays that meet the needs and dreams of me, Papa-Bug, and the Little-Bugs. Those dreams will certainly involve biological and extended family. We are truly blessed that we have so many loving people who want to celebrate with us. I keep in mind that I am responsible for the Little-Bugs in this house having a fabulous time, and for building traditions that are comfortable and sustainable for many years. I am not responsible for how other people feel when I adjust our family's traditions and Holiday commitments. We will continue to search for balance between obligation, expectation, dreams, desires, and realities. My focus is on having fun, all of us looking forward to each new holiday delight, sharing with family sometimes, with friends sometimes, and staying quietly at home reading "A Child's Christmas in Wales" sometimes.

Every year I find a place or two that I can make a change and adjust my expectations. When I am looking forward to the holidays and looking for ways to simplify those holidays, a good place to start, in my experience, is with how much we do and with whom we do it.

Simple Saturday: Contemplating Technology

I have no easy thoughts today. Technology is a bear in our house. At once we feel there is too much (computers, iPhones, television...) and not enough (it would be nice to have an internet movie streaming box, or a DVD player, or better speakers...should the kids have their own iPod in their play room???). And this, as much if not more than any other place, is where Papa-Bug and I disagree. I want to err on the side of too little technology in our kids lives. He wants to give them more access than I feel is good for them.

Kim John Payne argues that about seven-years old is when a kid is old enough to use screen media. Based on the little I know about emotional and mental development and perparadness, I think he is probably right.

But.

But I have an iPhone, and the kids see me use it. But the pictures of their cousins are all online, along with videos, and I want them to feel connected to the far-away members of their families. But the internet is full of amazing resources for the homeschooling child.

Here is what technology use looks like in our house right now:


Family Movie Night on Friday night - this is a recent institution, to try and pull back from a more erratic schedule and make our TV viewing more intentional and less about parents being too tired to handle bedtime.


Television or Movie on Tuesday night - I get home from work with just enough time (sometimes) to scarf some dinner before bedtime. It's the only night I work outside this home, and it really confuses our evening schedule. Additionally, I am blitzed when I get home so unwinding with the TV Box helps me a lot.


Brother-Bug gets 30 minutes of computer time a day, his discretion - he has a log in and desktop with internet links to his favorite (and parent approved) sites. He uses it up first thing in the morning and knows that is all there is. Since setting this up, we have had much less begging and whining. He whines just a little when he gets logged off at the 30-minute mark.


iPhone use for Brother -Bug at parental discretion - I keep only educational apps on my phone. Papa-Bug has a slightly wider selection. We try to save iPhone play for Brother-Bug for times we need quiet or patience, or when it's a special treat. If he asks and we say NO, that's it. Whining and begging for iPhone uses loses future opportunities to play with the magical technical device.

Sometimes there is more screen time than "scheduled" - looking at pictures or finding relevant YouTube movies with a parent. Next week, for example, we are going to watch some of "Cars" while we try to make a map of Radiator Springs for a school project. However, I try to keep education mostly off the computer so far.

I try to keep my phone checking and internet browsing to a minimum, but it is a struggle for me. I want to read blogs, keep up with email and Twitter, and all the rest... One thing I have found is keeping the ringer off on my phone. I can check it occasionally throughout the day and if there is an emergency I will be called at home anyway. I turn on the ringer when we leave the house or if I know I am expecting a call.  I love my phone for the number of managerial tasks it can handle for me. In many ways it frees me up for other, more important, tasks. And it frequently sucks my attention when I least have attention to spare. It's a quest for balance.

Sister-Bug doesn't really figure into it much yet. I know in my guts that she is too young to watch movies and TV, but she does anyway because Brother-Bug does and we like to do movies together as a family. She doesn't play computer or iPhone games yet, but she does like to turn my phone to the lock screen to see the picture of her lovely self.

When it comes down to it, media and technology are an important part of the world my kids are growing up in. Part of my job is to help my kids grow slow, giving them plenty of time to Simply Play. Another part of my job is teaching them how to use (not abuse) and negotiate (not sink into) the media morass into which they were born.  I don't know if I am doing it "right". More and more of the time I want to take the kids far into the woods where Dora the Explorer won't invade their priceless childhood with her marketing schemes.

((There is a future post coming about Licensed Characters and their place in our home))

But that is not practical... because there just isn't service for my iPhone out in the middle of the woods.

What about you invisible readers out there? I feel like I am constantly in a battle for technological balance, and I must renegotiate my position from day to day. How do you feel about technology and kids or families? How do you use technology in your homes?

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Some of this post was inspired by The Happiest Mom's post on being a "tech mom". I don't know if I am a "tech mom" or not. It might depend on the day.

Over at the Simplicity Parenting Blog there are lots of articles about media, technology and Simplicity Parenting. I want to peruse them more, but right now I have been on the computer for about as long as I can be. Time to start dinner!

Family Movie: Because of Winn-Dixie

Has anyone else noticed that it is a huge challenge to find a movie that is appropriate for a young child and engaging for parents? I know it is harder for me than for others, because I really try to keep the media going into Brother-Bug's sensitive brain very clean and easy to handle. So we are stuck often with the most basic of films. Papa-Bug is more of an action-adventure kind of a guy, so children's media often leaves him bored.

At the library I snagged a copy of Because of Winn-Dixie. I haven't read the book yet, but I am a huge fan of Kate DiCamillo's writing. Last night we needed a family movie and we settled on this as a thing to watch.

The kids fell asleep pretty early on - but the scene where Opal finds Winn-Dixie at the grocery store elicited lots of giggles from Brother Bug. Papa and I watched it through and thoroughly enjoyed it.

The high points (without any spoilers or plot detail):

*The characters are real and matter-of-fact people. They are the people you do walk by at the grocery store, but because of story magic you get to peep into their lives. No one is a villain, no one is a hero (Opal is a little bit, but really she is mostly kid). These are all just people doing their best.

*The negative situations, references to drinking and alcoholism, loss of a parent, etc. are just there. Part of the story fabric. Nothing is blown up to Scary and nothing is swept under the rug. This is a hard balance to achieve and it is really well done here. Sometimes things in life are hard and we need our kids to know that hard happens. It's part of the story fabric - real or fictional.

*It has Cicely Tyson in it. Enough said.

*Dave Matthews plays an excellent role. . .and he sings to bunnies.

In my little head I am giving this 4 stars overall, and 5 stars for an all-around reliable choice for anyone older than 2 or 3, and enjoyable for all ages.

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You should know that no one tells me what to review or when to review it. These are merely my own thoughts, based on my own experience. Take it for what it is.