5 Steps to Less Screen Time

It’s everywhere, and yes, even sometimes in my own house.

Screentime overdose.

It doesn’t take all of the studies that exist to know that our children, and ourselves, are glued to our screens too often. We’re missing out on present moment living due to computers, smartphones, and television. Remember how on weekends, streets used to be lined with children playing? Now, often residential areas are like ghost towns, just because everyone is stuck inside.

And it’s not just our children. We can’t say it is. Facebook and notifications distract us from our family and we offer nothing but an example of distraction; distraction from life itself.

I would love to say that I was a parent that had kept electronics from my children. I was so close, our daughters were 8 before they had ever tried a computer game. Living off grid for a long period of time, without highspeed internet, had kept everything pretty limited. But then we moved, got busy, they had homeschool programs online, we got a shop, and soon our boy wanted to take part in games with his sisters... boom. We were lost.

It happens. It spirals. My last hooray is staying away from smartphones simply because I don’t want to tempt myself.

Life. That’s what’s at risk here. Life and tools for life. I’ve felt my way to the point that, for me, it’s not about keeping my children away from technology, it’s part of their generational make-up, rather I need to help them use it with awareness. We have the opportunity to offer our children solutions, awareness to their focus and attention, as well as, hey, a serious amount of fun play  time. Life flips by while we scan newsfeeds and cat videos... not to mention the numbing effect of violent video games and the emotional turmoil experienced by children in the name of entertainment.  But what’s scarier... if something can be... is the fact that “if you don’t lose it you lose it.” If you don’t know how to follow passions, interests, and wonderment, you lose the ability to experience it at all.

So, here’s my list of 5 things you can do to start curbing screentime. (and please note, there’s not really any “enforced” abandonment of screens entirely. In order to offer awareness and tools for life, we can’t simply restrict and take away. In many ways that simply encourages our children to do it anyway, but not get caught. However, it also means that building awareness takes some time. This isn’t a quick fix and it shouldn’t be. Its foundation building and therefore, a little time makes it a little stronger.)

1)      Play with contrasts.

 Start to draw attention to the emotional affects on each other of computers and games and even tv shows. Become the experiment. As a family, what happens if you only do screens after lunch or at certain times? What happens if you only go on AFTER you go for a walk and get some exercise... why does it feel better? What feels better? How does it affect how you feel and the general feel of the house? Also, if you’re struggling with television screen time, talk about the different feelings of different shows. What do fast and loud shows feel like, compared to slow ones? Look for differences in behaviour when your children are taking part in one form of entertainment and another. When you take part with the contrasting experiences your children aren’t feeling TOLD what to do or feel, but are observing it themselves and then can start to make conscious decisions on what works for each person. This is Screen/emotional education.

2)      Find alternatives.

When we don’t use it, we lose it. If we just tell our kids to get off of the screen, chances are they will be baffled at what to do instead. This isn’t 30 years ago, when childhood was filled with finding things to do. Our children live in a time when they are told what they can do. Chances are few of us still feel comfortable with our children taking off and not telling us where they are going. So, what do they fill their days with? What interests them, sparks them, excites them? What about hobbies and crafts and a huge stack of wood out the back that they can make whatever they want out of. Providing alternatives is providing opportunities... and what’s surprising is that, with those opportunities and alternatives, they rarely want to chose the screen instead. CREATIVE LIVING... is the name of the game.

3)      Be the example.

 It’s true. Each time we don’t know what to do with ourselves and we choose Facebook instead (my personal demon) of finding something creative ourselves... even just playing with our kids, or meditating under the stars, we are saying that life needs to be distracted from. Each time we say “just a minute” because we are surfing the net... we give the permission for our children to zone out on a screen. Ouch. But so true.

4)      Do a family challenge. No Screens (NONE!) for a week.

 Go camping, turn off the wifi, turn off the electricity, do whatever it takes. But just get away from it for one week. Stock up on books and board games... go on midnight walks and crazy times. Have fun. Let awareness build all by itself.

5)      Turn your attention to your children’s time OFF of screens. The truth is that the law of attraction works with everything and the more we notice what’s not working, the more we notice it... more and more and more. Same too though, the more you notice what is working... the cuddle up bedtimes when you talk together, the morning breakfast when everyone chats, or the walks with the dog when everyone gets exercise, the more those will happen, and the more you will notice. If you are totally focused on how much your family is in front of a screen, then no matter how much everyone tries to get off of them, you’ll never notice. The Law of attraction makes it so. So, start looking out for the moments of connection and play... you might be pleasantly surprised.

The Art of Boredom

My boy isn’t impressed when I express pride every time he announces “I’m bored.” At five years old he’s reached a new plateau and its one that has him slightly confused. When he was a baby signs of restlessness were greeted with me singing with him, bouncing on my knee or introducing new sights or sounds. Toddlerhood had his own explorations, but sometimes I would come in to set up a new sensory table, a new activity. As he grew a little more, he looked to his sisters for amusement, getting involved in their games, getting them to play with him, trying to be twelve rather than four. He has played and played and played, frustratingly never learning or moving forward, but having quality time with his sisters. But now at five and a half, he’s wiser. He’s played great games with all of us and he wants to do more, but he’s developed preference on what he likes to play and simply joining in to other people’s stories, just isn’t cutting it. His old games and toys, don’t seem to offer amusement and so often we just won’t do what he wants us to do. So, the wail of “I’m bored” follows.

And his mother says, “I’m so glad”, and I am.

Our children aren’t bored enough now days. We as parents seem to feel it’s our job to amuse, to set up and distract. Sure, I play. I can often be found on a bed driving some imaginary bus and saving some stuffed toys from some horrible fate, but then I stop for a bit, or sit on the “bus” and read, while he rides, drives and saves. I’ll offer options, but he’s five now and my instincts have told me, it’s time to enable, but not to amuse.

Remember car trips?  Remember staring out the window for sometimes days, watching the world wiz by and imagining everything under the sun, even just swearing you’d never take your children on road trips?

Remember going shopping with our mothers, or waiting for them to get their hair done? Remember playing with our fingers, as they were the only amusement, literally, on hand?

Now, we seem to do everything in our power to make sure our children aren’t bored. We offer them toys or iphones, we offer them treats to distract them or simply get other people to take care of them while we shop, so it goes smoother and they don’t get bored, because that would be a disaster. But who is it a disaster for? Is it really that bad for them that they are bored, or is it the inconvenience for us that make us avoid it so frantically?

Boredom offers opportunity. It is our spirit’s way of saying I have room here. I have space where I can do something different. I want to try something new. I’m ready for the next adventure. Boredom says let’s try something crazy. Boredom is the imagination’s invitation to come out and play. That’s why our parents did well to offer us that tub of clay or simple blocks to compete with boredom; they are tools for the imagination, rather than amusement or distraction for it.

Our children are children at an important time. Some say that when 85% of them retire from their careers, those jobs haven’t even been invented yet. Their imaginations have to be razor sharp, yet we live in a world that can actually blunt it. Boredom invites them to find solutions to problems, even if it’s just jumping on their bed chanting I’m bored! Boredom asks them to ask themselves what they think, what they want to do, whereas computers, iphones and most toys of today tell them what to do and not to think about it.

Well my son hates being told what to do, and although he’s been allowed to experiment with a few computer games, he’s come to the conclusion that they don’t leave much room for him to make the rules. His sisters don’t like him to make the rules either. But his imagination does. His stuffed toys do.

He still might not be too impressed with my “Yay for boredom” attitude and he’s a little confused when I say, “Hey squint you eyes and watch the light dance”. But he’s getting there.

And I still will join in a game every once and awhile, as long as his amusement isn’t depending on me to play. I’ll join in for my own amusement knowing he is strong and smart enough to create his own.

The Facebook Log off Week and the inspiration that followed.

As I mentioned last post I’ve been doing the artist’s Way by Julia Cameron over the past few weeks and the results are mind boggling. I have found myself burbling up to the surface, barely aware that so much had been gently being ignored as it was shoved under my consciousness. Crazy isn’t it?  A woman who writes under being Spiritually Aware suddenly finds out that maybe I haven’t been quite as Aware as I’ve been wanting to be. Hence the lack of posts over the past couple of years I suppose.

But like all unawareness the coming back into awareness is sublime. Like a wonderful page-turning novel I am discovering so much about Me and what I’ve expanded to over the past few years. Its like catching up with an old friend.

It is reminding me that is exactly what life is about. We are spiritual beings in a physical reality. We come here to live and often in that living we become closed off from the spiritual being we really are. If we live entirely from the Spirit perspective, we feel closed off, like observers to a movie scene. We are involved, but sometimes a little distant from the human experience. Yet, when we are unaware of the Spiritual element of life, we get so caught up in the illusion of it all, in the game that we become a victim to our own reality. Balance. The great Teeter-Totter of life.  I am back to LIVING my life, no longer distantly watching it or getting caught up in it, LIVING my day to day. CREATING my day to day and greeting the sun with a smile and a wave.

I was so excited on this new journey that I almost didn’t notice my exercises last week, until my jaw dropped. Cameron had suddenly announced the week of reading deprivation. No newspapers, no books no reading. Well that would be OK if it was twenty years ago when the book was written. Now, here in 2015... it meant no Facebook.

We run a small business. I post on SAP all the time, I email. Suddenly I found myself ponder, how was I to go Internet surfing free. I gave myself guidelines. Writing, no reading. No scanning newsfeeds, no clicking on links, only emails and posts to write. I was on for about 5 minutes twice a day. My computer wasn’t even turned on at home. I was free.

Yes, seriously. From dreading it, wondering how I could do it and horrified at my own habit, feeling like an FB junky, in a quick switch, I was free. Not only that, my posture improved, I stood straight and I focused on my family more. I could feel energy from my head to my toes and like darling Julia predicted, my thoughts were my own again.

That’s the idea. We are bombarded by thoughts all the time. We are inundated with information (plug, my husband wrote a song called Information Overload which he will be releasing on his next album, keep in touch at www.vibrationraisers.com) and it literally is forming what we think. It tells us how to see the world. Our perspective, which is really our own identity, is being formed by the information we take part in and now, in the age of the internet, we take part in more than before.  A day into my internet free week and I made a scary discovery. My emotional detachment, my sense of observing which I often had thought was a sense of spiritual awareness was none other than a symptom of information overload. Yes, I was observing life, but not for spiritual expansion, but for the postability of the event. How could I share it with others? How could I take a snapshot of the experience? Meanwhile, I was too far removed to experience it myself.

Yes, I’ve called myself back from the Facebook Abyss. I’m demanding my emotions back again. After all, yes, positive thought is the key to happiness but avoiding feeling offness cuts you off from your inner guidance system. FEELING is key to living! I needed to hear that inner voice again.

So, I enlisted one of my favourite tools. A tool I have passed on to so many. The wonderful world of Inspiration boarding. I went to my library, who had just sorted out their past issues of various magazines with very good timing, and I brought back a stack of everything from Parent Magazine to Architectural Digest. I browsed, I scanned and everything that made me feel good I cut out. Soon I had a box full and yesterday I started. My new desk I got a few weeks back had a glass top, so I carefully removed it and started scrapbooking underneath it. Nature images, quotes, pretty things, Opening French Doors with sunlight pouring in, beaches and one simple antique desk with a pulled out chair inviting me to sit down, now greets me when I sit here to create. I’ve told my children it’s my place for escape. I can visit any one of these images whenever I wish. I can imagine walking on the beach or sitting under a tree. I can do as I wish. What’s fascinating is the selection of images. As I cut them out I found myself re-introduced to my own inner self, learning I’ve grown and expanding as a person since starting the SAP site 5 years ago. That was the last time I did an Inspiration board (and from then to now a lot of what appeared on there has manifested into real life) and the difference is incredible. From my board based on cozy home life, on little children, babies, warm kitchens and comfy chairs, my new one is expansive, wide open spaces and inviting doors.  Its full of the unknown, full of adventure. It’s exciting.

So, why blog about this? Why confess to you that I, a Spiritually aware living coach, has been off lately and just connected? Because, I surprised myself with how the computer disconnected me. It blocked me. Before I went offline I read an article saying that children are actually becoming unable to recognize  human emotions through facial expressions because of screentime. It was a study performed somewhere. But I think its deeper. WAY deeper. I think we are being shut off from our emotional guidance systems. I think we are exposed to so much we are observing our lives, not as Spirit, but as.... as a viewer. We need to claim ourselves back again. Now will I be back on FB?...um yup. I’ll be posting and interacting. Will I scan my newsfeed and check out the Trending column, probably not. I love my FB community of SAP, it fuels me up with the interactions and people I’ve met. But I’ll also be logged off a lot more. I’ll be lying on a beach... somewhere in Spain.... or walking through a sunlit door... or walking down a bluestone path... and I won’t even have to leave my chair.