Setting The Example

Screens.... We are surrounded.  My home is no exception.  My oldest two daughters living at home have smart phones, like most young women and older teens. The battle to cut screen time is a battle I feel I lose with my older girls.  They seem to always be watching something on their screens.

I woke up late this morning.  When I came into my living room, my youngest had already been up and about.  Well... She was awake.  The TV was on, and she had one of her shows playing.  

According to the 2010 Kaiser Foundation Report, "Among 8 - 18 year olds, average total media exposure per day is 10 hours 45 minutes to TV, music/audio, computer, video games, print, and movies."

The 2009 Nielson report states that Americans watch TV an average of 4 hours and 49 minutes per day.  That is a 20% increase from 10 years earlier.  

In The Life Giving Home, by Sally and Sarah Clarkson, Sarah writes about an experiment in which she deactivated her Facebook account for two months while she was home with her family for the summer.  She writes about her instinct the first few mornings was to check her phone.  She talked about the impact not logging onto social media for two months had on her relationships with her family, her own mental clarity and peace, how her time was freed up for relaxing activities.  "When the two-month experiment came to its end, I logged in once.  Within ten minutes I was logging off, all too aware of the anxiety that had already returned to my thoughts."

I can't tell the children to not watch so much TV or always have their face in a screen of some sort of I am doing the same things.  How often do I check Facebook?  Instagram?  How often do I spend evenings binge-watching a series on Netflix.  I don't mean a few episodes or a season, but years of episodes.  Ever watched NCIS from episode one through twelve years?  I did.  I just recently watched five seasons of Hawaii 5-0 in about a month. It became my evening addiction, watching crime fighters in beautiful Hawaii while the snow flew outside.

But, then I began reading aloud more to my eight year old.  An hour before bedtime, I would begin reading to her.  We both began sleeping better.  (No screens before bedtimes helps with insomnia.). I would her her plead, "One more chapter," which was much more thrilling to this mama's heart than "One more episode."

I realized that I was a person that used to read a lot, that used to read to my children.  During some tough times in our family, and as my children got older, and as media became more ingrained in our lives, I slowly stopped.  I was reading some devotionals for me, but not really reading.  I had stopped reading nearly all fiction.  I wasn't digging into stories like I always did throughout the years. I was reading articles on Facebook or Pinterest. 

I stumbled across the podcast Read Aloud Revival when looking for something to listen to while walking in the morning.  There, I listened to Sarah Mackenzie and her guests discuss reading as a family culture. Adults were not only talking about reading to their children and all the benefits, but how they themselves still benefited from living a literature-rich life.  Many of these guests were strong, Christ-loving individuals that found spiritual strength from the stories they read! They seemed to know Christ better in some ways because they saw how He worked in biographies and history and even fantasies.  

I began to think that maybe those that read often can see Christ more clearly because their brain was trained to think in images.  Literature links imagery and emotions together inside our heads and hearts.  We can't passively look at a book and have the images formed for us like in a TV screen.  Instead, the work is done inside of our brains.  We can see Christ more clearly because our brains have already been trained to see what is not always right in front of us, what requires imagination and faith. Many of us will gain inspiration from movies like Star Wars, and can almost believe "The Force" is real, but struggle to believe in the Holy Spirit.

I realized that I can't expect my children to avoid excess TV and social media and screen time when I am not setting an example for them.  So, I shut off the TV.  I set my phone on a shelf across the room.  I went to the library and got into the books I had bought for next year's curriculum.  I now have a pile of books to read.  I am a bit choosy about what I put into my mind and heart, but I feel like me again. 

Actually, it was difficult. I found my mind struggled to focus on what I was reading at first.  I found that a text message could easily lead to twenty minutes on Facebook.  My mind had been trained to not focus on anything for very long.  It had become passive and lazy, used to a two page article at most, not the deep reading that used to transport me to another time and place. And this was after a few months of not reading like I used to, not years. 

Will my limiting screen time change my children or their habits?  I hope so.  All I know is that, before I can change my family, I must change my own actions.  A couple of my children have never enjoyed reading much.  However, even my little bookworms have gotten easily sidetracked by screens. 

I've decided to do my own experiment.  I haven't set up rules for myself yet, but I will once I pray it through and decide on a start date.  Until then, I will limit and write out my plan.  I will post about my experiment, counting my blog as writing, not social media.