I was very anti-screen time for a long, long time. I thought that allowing my children to play computer games, watch shows, or be on the iPhone or iPad meant that I was depriving them of the richness of an unplugged childhood. So I went through years and years of being asked and years and years of saying no. I don’t think I deprived my children in any way, as we would still allow a documentary every once in a while or do a family movie night once per week. What I believe I lacked, however, was balance.
Screen time isn’t evil and it doesn’t have to deprive children of a wonderful childhood experience. Visions of children running freely through flowered meadows are lovely and idyllic, but pretty unrealistic, considering the age we live in. Over the past couple of years, I have come to actually appreciate and (gasp!) encourage productive screen time.
For example, we own a Wii, but it hasn’t been hooked up in over 2 years. I keep asking my dh if we can just get rid of it, and he keeps saying no. So we’ve held onto it and not used it. A couple of weeks ago, my children played the game Just Dance at a friend’s house on their Wii and loved it. They know we still own a Wii, but they didn’t ask if we would hook it up because we don’t own the Just Dance game. So they got on YouTube on the Apple TV and found a ton of Just Dance videos. They can do all the dance moves of the game, but there is no score-keeping; it’s just fun dancing. They’ve been doing dances daily for over two weeks and loving it!
Are they in front of a screen? Yes.
Are they engaged in physical activity? Yes.
Are they having fun together? Yes.
Are they learning new skills? Yes.
So, although this is “screen time”, it’s far, far different from the image most of us have in our minds of children mindlessly drooling over hours of twaddly television or pointless video games. This experience even has me rethinking our own Wii. I actually want to buy the game, hook it up, and play it as a family.
Another example is the Lego website. My children absolutely love this site. At first, I thought it was pointless, but after watching them play a few games and design a few Lego guys, I realized that it is really encouraging their creativity and critical thinking skills. Again, it’s all about balance!
Saying no constantly is only, in my opinion, going to push that desire in them to want it more. So maybe find ways to say yes that you can all be excited about.
I’ve told this story many times before, but I’ll share it again to illustrate my point:
My husband is very technically savvy. He has been in the IT field as a career for over 5 years now, and he is completely self-taught. He has been a full-time pastor in the past, and his schooling was for ministry; but he keeps coming back to IT as his chosen career. He can program, build computers, troubleshoot, network, and do all sorts of things I don’t even know how to explain. Suffice it to say that he has yet to encounter a computer issue on a Mac or PC that he hasn’t been able to fix. His skills began at a very young age with his family’s VCR. His mother saw that he possessed a mind that wanted to know why things worked the way they did. So at four years old, with a screwdriver, she allowed him to take apart the family VCR and put it back together again–simply because he wanted to see the inside of it to figure out how it worked. That was the catalyst for his future career! He was fascinated by the family’s first computer and when it quit, he was allowed to keep it and take it apart. Over the years, he rebuilt it and got it working again by finding spare motherboards and hard drives and other parts out of dumpsters and computers that people were throwing away. As he got older, he began tinkering with web design, graphic design, and taught himself a few computer languages (PHP, Java Script, and others) and learned to write code.
I say all that to ask: What if his mother had said no to his screen time? What if she had viewed it as an evil waste of time and had made him run in flowery meadows instead? But she didn’t. She capitalized on an innate curiosity that he had and encouraged him in it. And he now supports our family very well.
I think, as homeschoolers, we’ve been made to believe that a screen is an evil, mind-sucking box that should only be allowed on special occasions; and maybe that’s true if all kids are watching is Barney and Veggie Tales. But screen time is about so much more than pointless video games, twaddly shows, and mind-numbing apps on iPhones. Used for a child’s benefit, screen time can teach critical thinking skills and even be a doorway to a passion and/or career for him.
Just another perspective,
Lindsey