Un-plugging my family

Sherri - posted on 06/07/2012

good luck!! I honestly in this day in age especially if your children are school age doubt this a forever thing. It just isn't feasible in this day and age for it to be an everyday forever way to live.

Hillary - posted on 06/07/2012

We did this experiment back in April 2010. I just happened to stumble across the note I had written and decided to post it. We had set a minimum limit on it of one week. I figured that would be long enough for a trial, but it wound up lasting closer to two weeks, and in a way continues now. I will say, there is probably a couple things that helped in our success. One, we lived in a small town, this made it easier to access kids to play with. Two, my kids at the time were 8, 6, 4 and 2. Three, it just so happened that ski season wasn't over yet, so we got to distract them a couple days by going boarding! And four, my kids had not been stuck on the tv or internet, they were already the type of kids who would rather be outside than inside. Also, in our town, it was not a crime to allow your children to walk to school by themselves, or go to the park on their own, or even go to the store to buy a treat! It was the best couple weeks we have had. My kids are now 10, 7, 5 and almost 4. What happened on those two weeks was wonderful. The other parents rallied around my family after reading my post to fb. We wound up having many games of road hockey with over 20 kids showing up. The kids would phone up a bunch of other kids and let them know they were going to the park and then they would head over there, and not once did no other kids show up. Since we un-plugged, we still have not hooked up the TV. It has become a special treat for watching movies once in awhile. The internet is completely restricted. They do not go on it all during the week, and are allowed a total of 1 hour on the weekends. It is up to them if they use the whole hour at once, or spread it out. I do get it is a different world, I do all my banking online, so I need the internet to pay my bills. We just recently moved thirteen hours away from both mine and my husbands families, people we have been around almost daily for the last 10 years, so the internet keeps us in touch and them in the loop with our kids. But I disagree with saying no kids would come play with my kids because they would have nothing to offer. I feel that my kids should not have to buy their friendships, and they have lots to offer. Just not technological things. They have many friends and most of the time are outside playing soccer, or jumping on the trampoline, climbing trees, biking down the road and just enjoying being kids. We sit down every day for dinner, I have an advantage of being a stay at home mom, so I have plenty of time to do the things I remember my mom doing for me. I am not against having television, or internet or video games (they can pass up internet time for a chance to play the ps3), it just wasn't for us. We do live a simpler life, we bake all our own bread, have a veggie garden for all our veggies and my kids have discovered the wonder of creating masterpieces in the kitchen since if I can make it, I won't buy it. My kids may not be able to talk about the latest shows on tv, and they know how to find an encyclopedia to do research, but they do also know how to use the internet to get the information they need. They will hopefully take these memories and pass them on to their kids. I hope they can continue slow down enough to enjoy life instead of just blowing through. An age of technology is fine, and it has many avantages, but to me, and I am not trying to argue or say I'm right, just saying my views, it is not worth everything they are losing. Like I said, we use it when we need to, and my kids can play a video game and kick my butt and they know more about my phone than I do (I think because they don't have the fear of wrecking it...lol), and I don't tell them that they can't play games if they go to a friends house, but the things we gain, like getting lost because we didn't use the GPS and trying to find our way back laughing the whole time about how hard maps are to read. The conversations we have while travelling are better than any show we could watch, we have nothing in our van to entertain them, books and road games are the only things they are allowed. So yes, this did work for our family and my kids are not missing out on anything and it has been anything but torture for them! That may change as they approach the teenage years, and we will cross that bridge when it comes, but I hope we can continue to show them their is more to life than the technological advances our society is making.

Louise - posted on 06/07/2012

I think we would all like to do this in theory, but in practise this is not going to work for your kids. It is an age of technology, all of their friends are going to be watching tv and playing computer games, doing their homework on the computer and surfing the net for knowledge. They will have no other kids to play with, who will come around to play when to the other kids they will have nothing to offer.

Your dream to raise your kids, like kids from the 80's sounds lovely to me, but to them it is going to be torture. I think I will settle for strict times of computer and tv access and eat together every meal. I have to adapt as well to the needs of children these days and not be stuck dreaming about my childhood. It is a different world out there now. Not a better or worse one but different.

I wish you well in your venture and I will be interested to know how long it lasted!