Our House is a Bit Like the Brady Bunch.
When I took away Dylan’s electronics – which happened in an instant and without any forethought – it never occurred to me that it would benefit the whole family.
Shane now tries to get in his daily hour of video time when Dylan isn’t around – usually early morning. He doesn’t want to “waste” his daylight hours, during which he could be playing with Dylan, on watching YouTube. That gives us the whole day to spend together! Shane usually spends his time with Dylan (and doesn’t clamor to spend it with me or his dad), but still.
Dylan’s punishment has also given me a new respect for the computer. I can easily spend a day on the computer, barely looking up – in spite of what doctors say this will do to my weight, internal organs, and eyesight. But now that Dylan isn’t allowed to use anything electronic, I’ve noticed that I am trying to stay off of the computer, too.
For one thing, we no longer rush in to watch whatever YouTube or Instagram video most recently made someone laugh. The kids have favorite YouTubers – Smosh and Unlisted Leaf come to mind – and they used to spend the majority of dinnertime replaying (over and over and over) whatever hysterical scene they’d seen that day.
Dinners are a bit more pleasant now – for everybody.
Television is no longer taken for granted. If the TV is on, Dylan isn’t in the room. We can’t even watch home movies together. We had to grant a “special occasion” to watch the DVD of the play in which he starred at school.
After a couple of weeks, I allowed Dylan to contact his friends – using that old-fashioned device, the telephone. NOT the cell phone. An actual land line. (We still have one.) There is still no texting allowed – so Dylan gets on the phone in the evenings (after Shane heads off to bed) and sometimes chats for more than an hour.
Our house is a bit like The Brady Bunch, except without all the siblings clamoring for the phone. It’s like The Brady Bunch with maybe just Peter on the phone, and Bobby having some milk and heading off to bed.
The kids – particularly Dylan – spend much of their time on music. Dylan plays the piano. The keyboard. The guitar. The drums. He sings. A lot. And if there are no instruments to be found, Dylan is making his own instruments out of anything that makes a sound: a ball, a rubber band, a pen, the table, the floor, the wall….
And while we’ve gone a bit back to basics here, the only issue that has surfaced is the inconvenience for me. I am no longer able to say, “Go play Wii!” and expect the boys to simply disappear for an hour. I can’t say “Free computer time for one hour while I work!”
In the summer, that was always an important way for me to get some peace.
But for now, our peace is coming in the form of fewer electronics, less noise, and fewer distractions from the real world. And it’s actually kinda cool.