We’re almost two months in to our house rule of “No Technology or Television” Monday to Friday.
The Good
The good is that we are spending more time together as a family. We talk more and I’ve laughed with my kids more in the past two months than previously when we were all hooked into computer screens.
We’ve played impromptu, made-up games, worked on spelling, read, and my youngest son went and got himself a newspaper route so he can save money to build a car using a snow blower motor. *insert me looking completely dumbfounded* Also, because he’s too young be delivering on his own it looks like I now have a paper route too but this is also a good thing because kids who are excited about delivering newspapers will talk about everything. There are no secrets on the paper route.
The Bad
The bad is that when this started I was watching Seasons four through eight of Weeds and now I can only watch it on weekends. It’s sort of driving me batty and yes, I did get busted trying to sneak in an episode after the kids went to bed and they came out and caught me.
The second bad was that my kids became computer zombified on Saturdays and Sundays so now on the weekends they are limited to two hours of computer time each. They were none too happy about this AT ALL.
I’m not sure if this is ‘bad’ per se but a couple of times over the past two weeks I’ve been tired because, you know, CHRISTMAS STUFF. So I’ve crashed on the couch and we all watched a holiday movie that I let them pick. #Elf #FTW
But other than that, it hasn’t been bad at all and that’s a good thing.
The Holidays
Listen, I’m not crazy. I’m home for two weeks with my kids and I have to work during a portion of that time so we’ve established that they can have two hours a day computer time. This is how I’m actually able to write this post right now.
The whole thing is a work in progress with the basic rule staying the same but nothing set in stone. All in all I’d say it’s a huge success. Bigger than I had anticipated. You should give it a try.
For reals.
I’ll post another update in a few months.
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