Unplugging The Kids

We move entirely too fast in society. We spend so much time with our technical devices - cell phones, computes, televisions, ipods, Wii, PlayStation....you name it and every house has at least one or two of these devices if not all of them. We are entertained at the simple flick of a switch and push of a button, but are we really any happier? Does watching movies, television shows and sporting events fulfill our lives, or is it merely a way of filling the time that we have in which we have nothing else to do? And if that is the case is there really nothing else to do?

When I think of the times in the last week of my life that I have been happy they are times that I have spent talking with people - face to face. Interactions with facial expressions, laughter, tears, hugs, and handshakes - not status updates or text messages. I think about these moments and then I consider the world into which my kids will grow up - how will they relate? and where will they find their happiness?

My daughter asked me the other day if television was around when I was a kid. Other than feeling somewhat old, I was sort of brought up short....when I was a kid we had one black and white television that we watched which quickly (during my childhood) was replaced by a color T.V. I remember fighting my brother, not for the remote, but for the "knob" that controlled the channel turner. You had to actually walk up to the television to change the channel and if we wanted to be sure that the other person couldn't change the channel, we stole the knob and hid it in the couch cushions.....juvenile, I know, but effective.

I don't remember computers being a big thing until I was in 4th grade and that was the year that my parents brought home the first "personal computer" upon which I loved to play the one game that we had which consisted of some very bad graphics of a plane that was to be shot down.

When I think of how far technology has come in the last 25 years, it is very cool and also very frightening. My kids, if left to their own devices, would love to play computer games all day, or watch movies....they would literally live in my room which is where both the computer and the television currently reside.

We do what we can to discourage this behavior.

We don't have cable. Last time I checked we get something like 5 television channels, 3 of which are PBS. We don't have a Play Station, Wii, or any other gaming system in the house and probably never will. The computers have a set time limit for the kids to be on and we do our best to limit that amount of time to an established amount based on the age of the kid. Being that the computer resides in my bedroom, all kids know that you simply do not wake Mom up on a day that she is trying to sleep in or you (and all siblings related to you) will suffer the consequences.

I have been known, when the weather is nice and I am sick of playing "screen time police" to simply switch off the breaker to my room. There is nothing quite so entertaining as seeing puzzled looks on the faces of five kids as they come out to find me and say, "Mom! The computer just stopped working! And the television doesn't work either!" To which I have to give them my most surprised look and say, "Oh, that's too bad! Maybe the electric company will turn them back on later. Why don't you go ride your bike instead?" It comes down to a simple phrase that my kids have heard entirely too many times...."Lack of options clears the mind".

There was a study done sometime recently that stated that the people that will influence you the most and shape you into the person you become are your siblings. Not your friends, not your parents, but the big brother that stole the knob to the television and then sat on it. Siblings are the testing ground upon which kids learn how to get along with others, how to share, how to fight, how to apologize, how to laugh and have fun. It wasn't clear where, exactly, that left kids that had no siblings, but in those cases friends and the siblings of friends seemed to play a bigger roll. But what about kids that now spend most of their day in front of a screen of some kind? I suspect we may find out in the next several years as those kids grow into adulthood and have to start making their way.

In the meantime, I do my best to unplug the kids. I love watching them play in the gardens, argue over who gets to play the part of the princess this time, and recently my favorite activity that the girls came up with was playing pioneers with their own covered wagon. Watching my oldest daughter, playing the part of the horse, pull the other three over the hill and then turn suddenly which led to a rather rapid capsizing of the entire wagon with three pioneers inside was, to say the least, rather entertaining. After the different body parts of the occupants of the wagon were sorted out and it was discovered that no one had been seriously injured, they went back to playing, but all three decided that they would now be the pioneer that walked next to the wagon instead of riding in it while they were on a hill. Many lessons were learned in that little adventure - how to make a cool wagon using woven wire fencing and a feed bag, how to travel in tight quarters with family, horses (even if they are your own sister) are not always reliable while pulling things, and the effects of gravity. None of which can ever be truly learned from a computer or television screen.