I tell you, it’s a wonder anything gets done at our house because when it comes to electronic distractions our place is definitely on the map
Off the top of my weary brain we have: five laptops, one desktop, two iPhones, one iPad, one mobile phone and four televisions in our house. And two DS’s, one Wii, one Xbox and one Playstation 2. And numerous radios, CD players, blueray and DVD players, including a portable DVD player. Even a record player around here somewhere.
So we’ve decided to trial a blackout for the whole family from Monday through to when we arrive home Friday. Initially we suggested two weeks, then we cut it down to one week before finally agreeing on the weekdays only. Then, once we were completely settled on this and were determined to be steadfast in our decision we thought Friday night is really the weekend, so we cut it to Monday to close of business Friday.
And if you’re thinking we’ve allowed ourselves to be bullied and overridden by our kids you’re wrong because we hadn’t even told the kids yet, it’s just suddenly Tracey and I realized we were going to suffer this nightmare too.
Now as you can imagine, the reaction to our announcement hasn’t met with ticker-tape parades and screams of ‘more, more’ – I myself cried myself to sleep the first night I announced it. Surprisingly, Master19 is keen though. Unsurprisingly, Miss16 is not. Oddly, she’s more upset about not being able to play her music than anything else. Having her not playing her music was one of the prime reasons for doing this. Honestly, there’s only so much teen pop I can handle and we got there about a year ago.
Poor Master5 is devastated he can’t watch Pokemon even if he’s a really, really good boy.
We’re doing this now because it’s the start of a new school year and we’re hoping it will help the school kids to focus. Master19 heads off to uni in a couple of weeks, he’s keen to shake his habit of watching movies or playing games every night. This blackout isn’t all about the kids though. Tracey & I are hoping, without the distractions offered by multi media we’ll have a week being more involved in our kids and the moment. Plus I can read some books. It will be good for all of us.
So we’ll see you on the other side people. Miss us 🙂
well done. I look forward to reading about all the fun things you get up to. It’s amazing how much time we spend on/with tvs, computers etc. For our household of four we have two 50inch tv’s, another one in each of the bedrooms (and a spare one int he entry hall), a dvd and video player attached to each one, five laptops, portable dvd players, hundreds of dvds, two foxtel units … and the list goes on. Good heavens! I think I might give this a go myself! Where are the days when we used to play games and talk to each other.Good luck and enjoy your time together.