I’ve
been reading the book "A New Earth" by Eckhart Tolle, going to yoga more regularly, and
posting reminders around the house to stay a bit more present and centered and
in touch with myself and my family.
So last week while in the tub, where I get all of my best ideas; I had
an “ah ha” moment. Or maybe this
one was more of an “ah…maybe” moment.
I
was meditating on how much my kids have begun to obsess about the media in their
lives. They LOVE, LOVE, LOVE to play on the computer, and to battle it out on the
Wii, and to watch Saturday morning cartoons together on the couch. It’s not
like it’s out of control and to be honest, these are times that my boys always
get along, work together and are happily entertained.
I
think of myself as a media-moderate kind of mom. I have never banned the box or made screen time a forbidden
fruit. But I definitely have time
limits for all things electrical, and my boys are pretty agreeable when it
comes time to power down. They usually get twenty to thirty minutes of computer
time, but not everyday, and we generally reserve TV for the weekends.
My
husband is a TV producer, and we both firmly believe that kids need to be
taught how to manage and evaluate media in their lives, not be kept from it entirely.
We talk about the commercials they see and the content of what they watch.
That being said, my little idea in the tub was to
completely remove media from our lives for the upcoming summer break. I’m talking no TV, and no computer
games. These happen to be the two
main time-suckers for our kids. I
have decided to allow a movie a week, as this is usually a family activity
and we still have to justify the home theater we installed in the basement.
I guess I’m just curious to see how this might change our
family’s concentrated time together this summer.
In many ways, summertime is a much
easier time to conduct this little experiment, with a lot more of our time
being spent outside. But I also
know how easy it is to rely on the various screens in the house to mindlessly
entertain the troops at day’s end.
I am also thinking of waiting until summer because I am going to need
some time to prepare. I know full
well that when push comes to shove, and the little dudes are tired and bored,
there will be moments of weakness.
And I will need to have my kid-entertainment quiver filled with
creative, media-free activity arrows.
So
I’m starting now.
Throughout the next months,
I’ll be blogging about my journey to the great beyond. I’ll let you know as I go how it’s all
unfolding or unraveling.
Wish me luck girls…Mama’s
gonna need it.
Oh, and yes I’ll be following
the rules too, replacing “The Soup on E!” and “Keeping up with the
Kardashians”, with the tower of dust laden books on my night stand, and the un-opened scrabble game from
three years ago.