Summer Computer Battle Plan

Ahhh summer, the sound of birds chirping, crickets singing, and that annoying little jingle that plays as the computer fires up. My house is no exception and these days we are 1:1 in the ratio of computers to humans. This means that on many a Saturday, you will be amazed by the eery silence that fills my house, punctuated by the occasional “Aghh, I died!” or “OMG, you have to see this!”

As the end of school nears (in fact it’s in sight), I have been frantically looking for a way to curb the computer use. I can’t bear the idea of my precious spawn wiling away the hours staring at a screen and having all of their creativity slowly drained and replaced with an irritability that marks the extended use of computers.

My first assault was to try to work with the beasts. I informed my two older children, who have basically unlimited access (although the computers are programmed to shut down at 10pm and fire back up at 7), they will be joining me in the blogosphere. I figured if they are going to spend time on the machines, at least I could force them to engage their brains while they are at it instead of mindlessly chasing digital chickens in Minecraft.

Child #2 will create her own blog and is required to post to it three times a week. Posts can include poems, stories, songs, videos (created by her), powerpoint presentations, or screenplays. My husband and I (and of course the grandparents) will have the blog address and will verify that there are at least three new posts each week. After the initial groaning, Child #2 has been a font of ideas. She just can’t seem to come up with a name for this blog.

Child #1 already has an excellent blog and is expected to post to the Teen Takeover blog as part of his commitment to writing for the York Daily Record. His assignment is more vague – three posts a week to either/both blogs and/or a third blog created for the summer project. His reaction was a heavy sigh and an eye roll, but being the first born, he’s a willing subject.

The real screen addict, though, is Child #3. He begs, borrows, and barters for computer time beyond his two day-a-week allotment. He knows how to work the grandparents and babysitters, plus he’s expert at sneaking computer time when I’m preoccupied by the garden, animals, or my laptop. We finally put lockdown on the computer, but he figured out how to get around that by signing in as a guest.

I can’t bear a summer of negotiating with this child. This past Sunday as he presented all the reasons he should be allowed a few hours with the sacred screen, I threw up my hands and said, “Go ask your father!” I’m usually where the buck stops in this house, at least in regards to children, so this outburst shocked us both.

His father was equally surprised and after considering telling him to call Nana, he proffered his ipad. Something must be done or this persistent child will be running the show by the end of June.

We huddled up as parents and created the “Summer Computer Plan”.

No computer (me included) can be used before noon.

Every Friday will be “Screen Free Friday” in which no computers, TV’s, Itouches, Iphones, or Ipads will be turned on with the exception of family movie nights, but then everyone must watch the same screen (forced togetherness – love it!).

As you would expect, groans all around. But then I said, “Isn’t there a project or hobby you’d like to work on this summer? I’d be happy to help you get started.”

And my ever thoughtful, but never present on a Friday, husband offered, “Maybe you could find some fun things to do all together on Fridays.”

This got the creative juices flowing and before the end of the evening Child #3 had drawn up elaborate plans to build a “real fort”. Child #2 was asking if we could go to laserdome on the first Friday after school is out. Child #1 was quiet, his wheels turn more carefully.

If the onslaught of summer has you quaking in your parental boots, consider taking the battle to them. Make your own plan and announce it, don’t bargain, negotiate, or even seek the input of the shorter species. Just do it.

Camp Achterberg

July seems like the longest month of the year to me. I don’t know if it’s the long wait for ripe tomatoes, or the endless days of children brimming with energy and attitudes. Either way the month surely drags.

When they were small I stockpiled all the camps for July. A few hours of peace were worth the price tag, besides Vacation Bible Schools run back to back and cost nothing. But then the protests began. No one wanted to go to bible school. No one wanted to get out of bed for camp. It’s too hot. None of my friends are going. Blah, blah, blah. And the costs of camps for bigger kids seems to escalate with every year and every sport.

To avoid their rebellion, I rebelled. No more camps. Alright just one each. This summer we’re down to the free Harry Potter camp at the library and a Medieval Times camp through the school system. My checkbook is happy, but I’m back to the endless days of nothing to do but ferry the children to the pool or friends’ houses. Frankly, I’m bored.



"Swimming in the driveway"

 So it’s time for “CAMP ACHTERBERG”. Camp Achterberg was born one summer a few years ago when there was too much time and no money for camp. So I made our own camp. Five days of homemade fun! When I first announced it, you could hear the groans for miles around. But ask them about it now and they love to tell stories of Camp Achterberg. “Remember when that lady came and yelled at us for swimming in her driveway!” This was the stream hike that went a little too far and ended with threats from a distant neighbor when the kids were jumping off her driveway bridge in to the creek that ran underneath. She was pretty worked up and it certainly didn’t help that the kids thought she was kidding when she yelled, “No swimming in my driveway!”
Camp Achterberg is one week of planned events led by none other than mom. Here is a list of ideas we’ve used and/or considered:

- stream hike - you don’t need a stream running down your street like we have, you can head over to a park or just pull over along the side of the road. Be sure to wear old shoes, sunscreen, and bug spray.

- Visit a farm – there are loads of farms out there that give tours, check them out online or ask a farmer at your farmer’s market if their game.

- Visit an obscure museum. Most of us never visit the museums in our town unless we have company visiting, and then we just hit the big ones. There’s a National Clock and Watch museum nearby that gets rave reviews, look in your phone book or online and find a museum noone knows about – they’re usually free or even cheap.

- Make a big, messy art project. Go to your local arts & crafts store and buy something you’ve always wanted to do – tie dye is fun. Last year we painted tiles left from a rehab project as stepping stones for the garden (and grave markers when the fish we won at the carnival died).

- Go to the movies

- Have storytime – no matter the age, kids still love to be read to. Fix a snack, get comfy and read.

- Taste test all the ice cream stands in your town (get a pint to go from each and dig in blind folded!)

- Go bowling or ice skating

- Invite friends over

- Take a hike

- Go canoeing or kayaking

- Sleep in a tent in the yard

- Have a bonfire and make s’mores (or use your grill if it’s too hot)

- Swap bedrooms

- Go berry picking

- Take a factory tour (we loved the candy factory tour!)

- Make a water slide in your yard

- Put on a talent show (pets are also invited to perform)

- Visit a kennel with new puppies

- Volunteer at a food bank

- Take a bike ride somewhere other than your own street

- Build a bug or rock collection

- Go to the pool from the minute it opens until the minute it closes

- Go geocaching or letterboxing

- Have a picnic

We brainstorm ideas and nothing is off the table. Sometimes a camp day is simply each kid inviting three friends to come play which makes it feel like camp. Or it’s a trip to the dollar store with all the money you can earn in one morning (great trick for getting your house picked up). It’s doing anything you wouldn’t do on a normal day. It makes every day a special occasion. For us, going out to eat is rare, so a camp day might include a meal out somewhere new.

Hairnets required for factory tours!

If you haven’t got a whole week to dedicate to camp, try one day a week. “Camp Tuesday” works just fine. Some of these activities might cost a little money, but compared to the camp fees, they are a real bargain. Start your own camp this summer. I promise you’ll make memories that last a lifetime and you’ll never realize how much fun you can have in your own hometown.

An Examined Life

I was able to spend some time with a good writer friend this weekend. We spend a lot of time scheming about how to get great writing jobs and this adventure was no exception. We attended a Creative Writing workshop with author and poet, Melissa Greene (www.writefromtheheart.us). There were an interesting group of people in attendance. They were all people who loved to write and loved to use their imagination. Melissa talked about the creative writing process and said a lot encouraging things. She then led us in some exercises to help us find our “creative focus”. I enjoyed the opportunity to let my mind wander, unfortunately everything it wandered to was pretty depressing which was a surprise considering it was a gorgeous afternoon, I was hanging out with a friend I don’t get to see enough of, doing one of my most favorite things with someone who could be a potential mentor. That’s the thing about your mind though – it rarely goes where you tell it too. So sometimes you have to just follow it where it takes you and believe there is a reason.

The overall message of Melissa’s workshop (and I would say her “ministry”) is that writing is healing. It helps us to process what’s going on deep inside. Especially when you are writing for no one but yourself. I’ve kept a journal all my life. Every now and then I think about burning that huge box in the basement because really – why am I hanging on to those journals? I wrote those words for myself so that I could process my own emotions and ideas. I’m fairly certain they would be ungodly boring to anyone else, except maybe back when I was young and single and wrote about my dating exploits. But those entries might get me in trouble and I certainly wouldn’t want my children to happen upon them. Which brings me back to the question – why don’t I burn them? Maybe I will some day. Or maybe I’ll leave directions in my will that they be burned. Or maybe I shouldn’t really care because I won’t be around to be embarrassed by them.
If you’ve never kept a journal, I would encourage you to try one. Here’s why – life is going by much too fast. We are all in a hurry and there’s too much on our plates. When we stop for 10 minutes just to write what’s rushing through our minds it forces us to be present. To be here in the now instead of already planning what’s coming next. A journal doesn’t need to be great writing. In fact, it’s very freeing to know you can write whatever you want, capitalize what you want, put commas wherever you want, and no one’s going to judge. (I just got some critiques of my novel back from a contest I entered and they were all over my horrible use of, actually lack of, commas. I felt judged, but that was the point. Now, though, I’m feeling I should put a comma in every possible place,.) But with a journal you can leave your grammatical hang-ups behind and write stream of consciousness. Heck, you could do away with punctuation altogether. That might be a good way to confuse anyone who reads your journals upon your untimely death. Ah, now there’s an idea!

Anyway, today’s kid-friendly organic life idea is that you should keep a journal. If a journal is intimidating, find a scrap of paper and make a list of the words that run through you mind. Or look around you and list the things you see. It will force you to be present. Try this with your kids. In fact, this is a great summer project idea! Find a journal for your kids – you can buy a fancy one, or pick one up at the dollar store (they always have blank books) or just grab an empty notebook. Find a pen that feels good to write with and start journaling. When I got my daughter started, I bought a blank book that had a gray cardboard cover, used stickers to write, “Addie’s Dream Journal”, and then added all kinds of animals and flower stickers and left space for her to write. Inside the cover, I told her to fill it with whatever came to her mind and heart.

I think we have to help our kids be intentional in their living. They are much busier than we were at their age. I keep trying to figure out why that is and I think it comes back to expectations. When I was a kid, you had all the time in the world and no one was really paying attention to what you were doing and whether you were using your time wisely. Nowadays, kids have so many options - sports, camps, after-school activities, music lessons, religious groups, scouts, and instruction in everything from foreign language to computer programming. Although I think I limit my kids, we still have an activity every evening except Tuesday, so obviously I’m not practicing what I preach here.

I don’t know if all this activity is bad really. Who’s to say? I doubt there’s been any long-term studies done. What I do know is that we need to help our kids to pay attention and be present at whatever they choose to do. And journaling is one way to make that happen. It helps us sort out what our heart really wants and gives us permission to say what we think, uncensored by manners or expectations. It’s a safe place for our creative and contemplative spirit. And that is a spirit that must be nurtured if we intend to be happy (and sane).

Here’s one important final note – and I’ll write it in caps so you know I’m yelling this at you. UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES SHOULD YOU EVER READ YOUR CHILD’S JOURNAL! Trust is key. This journal is meant for no one’s eyes but its authors. No matter how tempting – promise me you’ll never read your child’s journal.

I have some really special journals I keep in a fire safe. I could lose pretty much everything other book in my house, but not these three journals. They are the journals that I write to my children. I started a journal for each child when I first learned I was pregnant. I write in their journal of all my worries and wishes for them. I write about funny or poignant things they say or do. And I write the things I wish they would sit still for me to tell them. I write lots about how much I love them and how proud I am of them. I write observations about the things that seem to make them happy or sad or angry. I hope that some day no matter where this life takes us they will have this physical record of how much I love them and how important they have been to me from the moment they were conceived.

I hope this post inspires you to start (or re-start) your own journal and encourages you to get your kids journaling too. There is potential in any thought. It was Socrates who said, “An unexamined life is not worth living.” Kind of tough love reinforcement for journaling I’d say. Life is such an amazing, rich, boring, incredible, complicated, beautiful thing. I, for one, think it’s worth examining.

Unleash Your Creative Spirit!

When was the last time you created something? Something other than dinner? What do you enjoy doing that nurtures your creative spirit? And don’t say you don’t have a creative spirit, because it’s in there somewhere. It’s very easy to let our own hobbies get lost in boxes in the back of the closet while we raise our kids and attend to the real world. But remember when you were a kid and you had hours that stretched out in front of you unencumbered by responsibilities? What did you do then?

This past weekend I found myself in a ballroom at a cheesy hotel in Gettysburg with over 200 other women working on scrapbooks. There were many moments when I looked around at these women of all ages and stages, dressed in their jammies (I kid you not!) trading stickers and stories, and thought, “What am I doing here?” Lots of these ladies are part of the polyester set and get pretty worked up over a trip to Cracker Barrel, and I would never have dreamed I’d have anything in common with them. But here I sat amongst them listening as they shared tales of their trips to the Grand Canyon or the local dirt track. Pets figured in to many of their snapshots as well as babies smashing food and pretty little girls in pink ballet slippers or prom dresses. There were plenty of heirloom photos too - the kind with the crinkly edges, soft focus, and faces so familiar even if the clothing and hair style isn’t. This past weekend I spent 48 hours scrapbooking with 200 kindred spirits, many I had absolutely nothing in common with except the love of creating scrapbooks that tell stories, celebrate lives, and secure memories.

I don’t have to tell many of you how hard it is to leave your husband in charge of his own children and home for a few days – all alone. I made lists and reminded him all week long of who had to be where when. I wrote out the instructions for caring for the horses and chickens and he learned the hard way which horse to feed first. But he survived. I think it’s really important that we take time to pursue the things we enjoy. Not only does it set the example for our children, but it keeps us sane. And sanity is a good, and underappreciated, thing. Besides our children need to know we have interests in life other than them.

So what do you like to do for fun that you haven’t done in ages because there isn’t time, money, or opportunity? Did you collect butterflies? Build model cars? Paint watercolors? Maybe it seems nerdy or something only people who still live with their parents would do, but after spending a weekend with those women in that ballroom, I feel pretty good. I feel rested, content, happy. We all need to nurture our creative, playful selves.

One half of the hotel/resort (although I say resort, I must clarify that it was actually a sprawling, somewhat tired looking collection of low level buildings, with one “high rise” connected by a human habitrail plunked down near the battlefields serving up pressed turkey, powdered eggs, and lots of gravy in the “café”) was consumed by the scrapbookers, but the other half was host to a youth ministry conference of some kind. Late on Friday night a group of youths wandered through the habitrail over to our side of the complex. I can only imagine what they must have thought at the site of all those women drowning in their scrapbooking “gear” gabbing away as the oddest assortment of music I’ve ever experienced warbled out of someone’s ipod speakers. Obviously they felt they needed to shield the rest of the world from us, so they upended a few tables that were in the hallways and pushed them up against the ballroom doors, effectively barricading us in the room. We were so engrossed in our tasks and happy to be starting a weekend without children or responsibilities that no one even noticed. I think that if someone from the hotel hadn’t happened by, we might still be in that room happily ensconced in our tasks at hand. I’m not sure what happened to the good Christian youths when the incident was reported back to their leaders, but I appreciated their effort. It seemed like something I might have done if I’d found a bunch of “old women” quilting or canning or engaging in some other “old person” hobby when I was an invincible teenager.

I never thought I would say it, but I’m happy to be on my side of those barricaded doors claiming time for me and my own hobbies, despite what it looks like to the busy, responsible people or the kids. It’s good for my life. It’s also good for my family. But mostly it is good for my soul. I hope you claim some time for your own hobbies this year. Make something, learn something, practice something, enjoy something – something just for you - not for your family, not for your kids, not for your community. Just for you.