Fort Worth, Texas,
01
August
2014
|
12:01 PM
America/Chicago

Going media free (part 4)

We far from nailed it

We attempted to go media free and wouldn’t you know? Nailed it!!!

Just kidding. We far from nailed it.

Ok guys, this is HARD.

The Conklins are not taking to going screen free likes ducks to water. Like. At. All.

You know the ancient proverb "fall down seven times, stand up eight?" One of my favs.

Well we have fallen down 7,000 times with this project, but we keep trying to getting up. We are at 7,001 at the moment.

The exciting news is that we have learned a healthy balance exists. We have learned that we do great without it. When we are unplugged, we are awesome! Unfortunately, it's just a bugger of a habit that is soooo easy to slip back into. This has been a frustrating experiment, but that fact that we struggle means we need to be doing this.

Going media free really is just as simple as removing the screens from the family. After simply telling the kids, “no,” you have to listen to them belly ache for a short time before they go off and find something to do.

I am going to be honest, I enjoy my screen time just as much (if not more) than the kids! I like texting people, playing Words with Friends and reading news articles online. I even do a bible study with a cool app on my phone!

Almost everything I do can be done on my phone! So when I want to get on my phone or watch a TV show, I then let the kids jump on their devices. I think my own personal enjoyment of screen time may be what is keeping us from being truly successful at this (oh my gosh, did I just admit that?)

We have worked hard to make sure the family is “off” the screen more than “on” during the day and that seems pretty manageable. The kids are getting it! They know our goal is to spend more time doing other things besides being on the screen. They don’t argue as much when I declare, “We are screen free until X, Y and Z are complete.” We are doing pretty well decreasing our screen time. Having said that, I would really like to fulfill my pledge to this blog and get to a point where we are just “off” all the time. We are working on it.

I am excited because we are going to Michigan this summer. For part of the trip we will be “Up North” where it is pretty hard to get cell phone service and I plan to ditch the hand- held games before we go.

The Conklins will be screen free before the summer is over, even if it means we have to hang out in the woods for a few days to do it.

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