Behind the Screens – as a means

It has come up so many times in conversation that I feel called to write on this, from the sheer purpose of offering one perspective. This is because I feel that having other’s views and thoughts on anything can help us understand how we feel and how we can move forward when feeling uncertain with any given situation.

So… I’m going to share my own experience with “screens” for children as a mother. Firstly, I want to ad my disclaimer and say that we are all so very different. We all need to do what is right for our family at any given time and avoid being influenced by outer opinions and judgements.

With that being said I am going to share my own experience of using screens. For us… It literally is a go with the flow kind of life and this is how it is with screens too. I was once asked how much screen time I allow by a friend considering homeschooling but concerned about this side of things. It’s a very valid concern I’ll grant that.

But to me, it’s all in how it’s “used” and not to be “abused” as a baby sitter. That being said, many of us have used TV or screens as a baby sitter. But how we use screens, just to offer transparency… is occasionally in an immersive way. When we are studying or researching something, there is so much more absorbed with visual demonstrations, combined with other research methods like reading.

Other than that, our use is very little other than a family movie here an there mostly when the weather is poor. But even when the children are unwell or it is wet outside, we mostly forget the screens exist. We have a huge library, plenty of things to do at home and the world outside is too big to depend on screens for fun.

The girls spend hours at play with their dolls house or building things like duplo, lego or blocks. We spend hours reading books together or outside in nature and the back yard. That’s not to say at times we don’t spend hours in front of a screen on rare occasions when we are learning about a subject of interest or if it has been in a time when we had pressing work matters… we’ve allowed them to choose an “entertaining” show we have approved of.

The conditions are that it has no violence however, these often end up being an olden day classic like Heidi, that promotes an understanding of the real world… much less than pure fictional dramas. We all have our own preferences and that’s just ours. I have no opinion on what’s best for anyone else. I just wanted to share how we do things in our home.

I hope that in sharing what its like with us on the screen front, that you can feel more comfortable in your own skin, with a little conversation around what’s functional in the world we live in. I don’t give my children my phone and they have never had their own i pad. We don’t use screens in the car… although we did occasionally very early on.

Now we play a lot of “I spy”, listen to music or podcasts or just talk on car trips. The children have never played games on screens… instead we play games with each other. I know there are benefits of screen “saviness” for children, but I personally feel that there is so much more to gain elsewhere that I don’t see the need when so much of technology will soon be obsolete.

There’s plenty of time for it and we are in no rush. We’ll learn as we need over time what we need to. I recognise that your family is unique and want to say that I don’t feel that any extreme is the right answer for everyone. There’s no one size fits all solution for anything. All or nothing… whatever works for you. There have been many times we’ve gone without screens for weeks or months.

Then times we have binged. It really is what suits a family in that season of their lives that needs to be. Not what other’s say works for them. Let’s not cookie cut our parenting like the school system. We are all as different and unique as our own finger prints.