The Battle for Screen Time Rages On

The showdown at the OK Corral happened here almost two months ago. I really didn’t think they had it in them to hold out like this. My children have been without computer games for so long now, I’m not sure they even miss it. They could hold out indefinitely. I’m losing this bet, but I’m beginning to realize this may not be such a bad thing.

Two months ago I had a Mommy Melt Down Moment. I’m sure you’ve had one yourself, so I don’t need to make excuses (but I will anyway). I got up one morning and I didn’t know it but I had reached the breaking point. As I made a pass through several bedrooms picking up towels off the floor and tripping over the baskets of clean clothes yet to make it in to their drawers, my blood boiled over. When I encountered them in the kitchen where they had left their dishes on the table, pencils on the floor, and shoes abandoned in front of the door I began my assault. They retreated to their default positions of “It wasn’t me”, “I never touched it” and “I was going to do that when I finished (fill in the blank)..”

When my verbal assault produced no action, I had to go for the heavy artillery. “No computer until you start doing your share!” I spelled out a lengthy peace treaty which involved them doing their part (i.e. the dinner chore assigned to them, putting away their clean clothes, picking up their belongings, etc.) and in return they would be given their computer privileges. Until then the computer would stay locked down.

As I said, that was two months ago. In the beginning they stubbornly tested my resolve. I fumed, they whined, but I didn’t weaken my position one inch. If they wanted this hill they would have to acquiesce to my demands. Which they didn’t. At first I was outraged – all I was asking them to do is not be slobs and pick up their own things! It’s not like I was asking them to scrub the kitchen floor or clean a toilet (or a chicken cage for that matter!). Ridiculously lazy! Who did they think was going to pick up their belongings? (Yup, the only person who cared that their things were strewn all over in the first place.)

So I did the picking up and I put things away, although I did hold the line on the laundry and hid my daughter’s clean clothes until she begged to put them away herself. And then a funny thing happened. My husband and I noticed that the kids were fighting less. They were playing together. They were exploring the woods again. They re-discovered the joy of the zip line. They wrote stories. They played games. They played legos. They talked to each other and to us. And they stopped even mentioning the computer and all the exciting games. They acted out their favorite fantasy game Balder’s Gate all over our property. It was as if a fog had settled over our battlefield and made all the soldiers peaceable.

My oldest son does use a computer for homework and I’ve taken to giving him 20 minutes before the others get home from school to play Balder’s Gate, but only because he’s finally putting his laundry away the same day I put it in his room and refraining from leaving his vast quantities of stray papers (he would say stories, theories, ideas, strategies, etc.) all over every surface of the house. It’s a very thin truce.

I write all this as a reminder to you – you hold the power as the parent. You decide what you allow and what you don’t. There is no constitutional law that says your children have the right to watch TV, play video games, computer games, whatever. You give them that privilege (and I bet you purchased that privilege) and you can take it away. That gives you tremendous leverage. Remember that you only have leverage if the child in question values the privilege you are holding over them. We don’t have TV or video games, so my leverage lies with the computer games.

If you don’t want to fight with your kids about what they eat – don’t buy it. If you don’t like the clothes your daughter chooses to wear to school – don’t provide them. If you want more help around the house create some consequences. If you don’t want your kids to spend endless hours in front of screens – don’t let them. I think we forget that, at least for now, we hold the power in these relationships. Everything is not negotiable. We have lots of opportunities to teach our children about dealing with frustration, boredom, personal responsibility, unfulfilled wishes, and shattered expectations. Handling inevitable disappointments and logical consequences are life skills many adults I know don’t own.

I know this might sound hard and you don’t really want to be the “meanest parent in the world”, but here’s your out - when you create and clearly explain consequences you can stop being the bad guy. That’s why my standoff over doing your part is working and no one’s holding it against me (well, OK, my daughter occasionally argues the finer details of “doing your part”). I think they’ll cave eventually. I know I won’t. There is peace in the land because there is no bad guy here. There’s just a set of decisions and logical consequences. They know that it’s within their power to regain their computer privileges and they know that the only reason they don’t have them is not that their mom is so mean (that’s a given), but because they don’t want to pick up their things. It might be frustrating, but it’s fair.

It might be shooting myself in the foot, but I’m hoping they never get their computer privileges back. Without the technologically induced emotions of the screen, they are much nicer children. And they have discovered how much fun they can have without electronics. It’s funny, since we took away the computer games I’ve hardly heard my kids say, “I’m bored” once. They’ve remembered how to create their own fun.

The Times They Are A-Changin'

My husband recently installed a GPS in my car. Not that I asked him to. Not that I even wanted another technological gadget added to my already technologically challenged life. But it’s the thought that counts, right? Until I figured out how to shut up the robotically sweet voice (he calls her “Betty”, hmmm), it was almost eery. Even silenced, I am constantly distracted by the video game like quality of the screen that is forever in my field of vision on the windshield.

Still, it could come in handy he insisted. It would help me find customer’s houses. Or the houses hosting the birthday parties that my children attend almost weekly. And when we go on vacation just think how great it will be to have Betty leading our way! I was sucked right in to this bigger, better life until I was happily observing Betty observing me as I drove to the hospital to visit a friend. As I got on the exit ramp suddenly the road disappeared and according to Betty I was flying through the air not attached to any road! That exit ramp is relatively new, but I’m sure it’s been open at least a year. What else does Betty not know? If I trust her and throw away my maps – I might become irrevocably lost.

Will having this GPS in my car strip away another life skill? Reading (and folding) a paper map? My children have already grown up shoelace challenged from a lifetime of velcro and unreliable clock readers thanks to the gift of digital. I have friends that might just starve to death if you took away their microwaves. Most elementary schools don’t bother teaching script anymore. My children are amazed at my cursive writing. How do I do that? I am terrified that they will someday be in a life or death situation and have a note explaining their escape slipped to them only to discover it is written in script and they can’t even read it. Or what about an old-fashioned boss who still uses that ancient form of communication – paper and pen and heaven forbid, even writes in cursive? All this progress seems to be making us more helpless than ever. I take a strange pride knowing that I can cook over an open flame, my hands don’t cramp up after writing a few sentences, and I can tie a slip knot that holds. I’m an excellent navigator with a map and can even tell which direction I’m going based on the sun.

None of my children stuck with the scouts. But I am trying to raise them to be competent, self-reliant individuals, still I wonder if they could survive in a third world country with no Velcro or digital clocks? Could they have a written correspondence with anyone over 50? Of course you could argue that who really needs to tie a shoelace – you can find a slip on version of just about any shoe. And what isn’t digital these days? No one has real clocks. I grew up in a house with a clock that had roman numerals. My children just wrinkle their brows in disbelief at that reality.

Tell any teenager these days that you grew up without a microwave or DVD player or Direct TV. (Don’t even mention that you didn’t have a video player because they barely remember them anymore!) They are shocked, horrified – how could you have survived? No cell phones? The horror!

I’ve been thinking that a great new job might be as an electrical outage survival consultant. Or maybe a generational communications consultant. The gap seems to be growing and I truly don’t want these abilities to disappear. Maybe that’s because if they did that might make me pretty obsolete too. Or maybe that just makes me eccentric. Either way, I hate to see a day when a person can’t function without his handheld electronic organizer or find her way around her own city if all the satellites were absconded by aliens.

I’m all for progress, truly I am. I have nothing against it. I am amazed by what is possible these days. But at the same time, I’m not ready to trust it all either. I feel better knowing I don’t really need any of it. I do like to play sudoku on my palm pilot. And Betty is a form of entertainment too; trying to find roads that don’t exist in her reality is a strange thrill. I love to hear her incredibly calm voice telling me to make a U-turn at the next available safe intersection. I picture her sighing in frustration and disappointment as I ignore yet another of her simple directives.

I guess what I’m trying to say is – it’s important to know how to tie your shoes and read a clock. It’s important to know how to heat water on a stove and read a street map. Maybe they seem just like learning trigonometry – unnecessary skills you will never use in real life. But I believe they are important because the world will always change. And the further we move in the direction of complete dependence on all things technological, the further we get from the earth and where we came from. Just because there are calculators, doesn’t mean you don’t need to learn arithmetic. When it comes down to it, depending on technological advancements can make a brain pretty lazy (unless you are the brain coming up with the technological advancements). So humor me, teach your children how to make popcorn on the stove (or better yet – over the fire). Teach them how much fun it is to write a capital Z in cursive. Buy them a pair of sneakers with real laces. And if they don’t seem to be particularly motivated, ask them just who wins Survivor anyway?