Tales of Me and the Husband

now that is a drastic title is it not?!  especially as i sit here on my beloved mac writing a blog post that heavily relies on technology to get its message out to the masses!  hypocrisy!  moving on.  so, my dad is not a real heavy facebook-user.  he has a name, but i’m not sure i’ve ever seen him post and i’m not sure that he gets the hang of how to even do it.  status?  wall?  friends?  what is this new fangled mumbo jumbo?!?  in fact, several months ago now, i kept seeing facebook notifications that he was friends with all of these people that he most definitely did not know.  people that i barely know from college.  i can only imagine that some of these people were common to both steve and i and thus popped up in his “people you may know” feed and so, well, of course!  friend.  friend.  click.  click.  friend.  click.  friend.  steve and i died laughing when we realized this, imagining him sitting at the computer looking over the bridge of his nose, through his smudgy readers, grimacing as he tried to figure the whole thing out.  and the number of times he’s gotten me on the phone to explain this or that, always computer-related, well, i can’t count them at this point.  there’s some saying about an old dog and new tricks?  😉  recently he came out of his facebook hibernation to post on our cousin’s wall for her birthday (hi laura!).  the post read as follows:

Laura,
Only the 2nd.FB entry from me.
HAPPY B”DAY
Lv, Unc. DEN

first things first, is he paying by the letter? did facebook start charging us per letter and nobody told me?????? no and no. he’s just… well… he’s my dad.  he’s that mid-60s guy who didn’t grow up with computers and the internet. he grew up with a paintbrush in one hand and a screwdriver in the other listening to beatles and bob dylan records even though his dad, the philly cop, told him not to because those hoodlums, especially the beatles, were solely responsible for drugs coming over to america (true story).  the man can build a house from the ground up (he seriously can.  he amazes me with his blue-collar abilities.) but a simple facebook message?  (or navigating his way to his daughter’s blog??)  well that, that’s tricky now… no, his childhood was marked by frequent trips to pennypack park in pennsylvania (alliteration!), its creeks and railroads his backyard.  he played pranks on his friends, smoked cigarettes before he knew they were bad for you, and was just generally mischievous.  a good healthy mischievous.  it was, you know, an internet-less world.  these sorts of things had more time to grow!

it got me thinking.  thinking about how freaking addicted we are to screens.  how his day wouldn’t look a whole lot different whether he was in front of one or whether he wasn’t.  how if their computer up and vanished, it’d at least be several hours before they noticed.  how this was his “2nd.FB entry” ever and yet he’s been on facebook for at least a year now.  i envy him!

screens, screen time, computers, internet, wii, video games.  oh man, oh man, oh man!!!!  i could write about ten million blog posts about this.  steve and i wringing our hands with the state of the world practically every third night while lindsey asks for an ipod touch and tells us how all (i do believe she exaggerates a bit) of her friends have one (and they have instagram too.  um!  fifth grade!).  how we have talked ad nauseum in our house about computers and addiction and how it’s ruining the world.  how steve has actually counted how many kids he sees waiting for a table at cheesecake factory looking at their phone instead of talking to whomever they’re with.  how, no matter how “right” or “wrong” we’re doing it as parents, they’re going to be heavily influenced by their friends who’ve grown up completely differently (that commune is lookin’ good these days!).  how toddlers who barely know three words can maneuver their way onto ipads, open apps, and settle into the game they wanted (in fact, said toddler could teach my dad a thing or two…).  i could go on.  like i said, ten million blog posts on.  but i won’t.  you get the point.

for the most part, our kids are preeeetty okay with how antiquated we are.  they’re like, “yeah, you guys suck, but it’s a losing battle.”  i mean, for the most part.  they definitely try to chip away at our stony we-hate-technology facade but steve and i are a terribly united front.  there is no backing down!  (that’s not true.  after much nagging from jordan, we finally succumbed to a wii a few years ago.)  but, i’d just like to ask, what are we doing as a culture?  i know, this is a huge question.  one that’s not gonna get answered today, tomorrow, ever?  but that whole history repeats itself thing??  are we going to fight back against this?  are we going to realize, “oh, hey!  our generation actually no longer knows how to communicate, no longer knows how to be bored, no longer knows how to read a book.  so, let’s scale it back on the iphones shall we?  let’s say no to our kids’ technological wants!”  steve’s been teaching at the college level for sixteen years now and he tells me that he has seen a serious drop in both papers and tests.  like a serious drop.  the same prompts, the same tests, the same material.  but the grades have gone down, the quality’s gone down.  it’s like we are so used to multi-tasking (did anyone like my status yet?  any new emails?  how many instagram likes?!) that we literally cannot focus on one thing anymore.  so studying for a test?  um, what’s that?

i’m not sure what the answer is.  i certainly do not have it down but am constantly, constantly, constantly fighting my own desires to check my email, scroll through instagram, read a blog post.  “parker’s occupied!  i’ll just hop on real quick!”  there are times where i want to throw my phone out the window and slap myself across the face.  hard.  sometimes i make a promise to myself: “i will not check my email for the next three hours.”  oh, but wait!  just once!

i hate it.

here’s what i did for a little while and i quite liked it.  after parker woke from his nap, i’d actually turn off my computer.  it was nice, because i’m way less apt to do something “real quick!” if it’s actually off. and i can be pretty good at putting the phone down and just leaving it far from where i am.  (and i can be pretty bad at it too.)  i get a little sick when i think i’m missing out on real life because i’m staring at a screen.  i can’t let myself do it, but do i come close sometimes?  yeah.

with the big kids, we give them thirty minutes of “screen time” a day.  they have their own username on our computer and it logs them off after thirty minutes.  they can do, pretty much, whatever they want with that time.  it’s usually some silly game.  and they’re remarkably cool about it logging them off.  sometimes they get on the wii (but, didn’t you just say…?).  yeah, the thirty minutes sometimes turns into sixty because the wii is on the third floor and i don’t always know what they’re doing up there.  but i do usually call up to find out what’s going on when they’ve mysteriously vanished, and i’ll give them a limit for that too.  but they don’t go on wii all the time (we don’t have that many games).  plus, if you recall, we don’t have tv.  so for the most part, that thirty minutes is all they get.  except for friday movie nights of course!   (jordan’s not a part of this–he has his own purchased-by-him computer, he’s 18, etc. etc.  we certainly are not giving a thumbs up to the amount of time he spends on it, but at some point, what can you do?)  sometimes i worry that our focus on how bad and addictive the computer games are will make them only want them more (it’s a slippery slope, my friends!), but when i see how they mosey about filling their time with something else pretty easily instead of lurching about on the kitchen floor chanting, “more time, more time, more time!” i’m confident that it’s better to err on the less is more side (and i do believe they may thank us for saving them from themselves one day.  wishful thinking?).  i’m sure this will change as they get older.  but for now, this seems to be working.  (and for parker, i’d say he watches one show, usually blues clues, maybe two to three times a week?)

we certainly don’t have it down, believe me.  and throughout the day, it’s just me and parker.  it’s not like i’m needing to go put down a baby for a nap and keep my toddler occupied.  i get that tv/ipads make that task monumentally easier.  i hope i’m not eating my anti-technology words if that day ever comes!

right now, much of steve’s work requires that he look at a computer screen.  same with me (i use the term work loosely here.  blogging is fun.  but for the sake of the argument, we’ll call it “work.”).  it’s so easy to widdle away three hours on the computer in the blink of an eye.  i definitely struggle with staying on task, not checking every social media medium there is, and simply sitting outside in the sun without my phone nearby… imagine that!  it’s on my mind, it’s a work in progress.  being aware of it, i guess, is step one.

so, judgements aside (seriously!  i do noooot have my shit together so far be it for me to point a finger at you handing your toddler the ipad!) can we talk about this??  how do you handle screen time with your kids?  do they have phones and ipads and such?  are you addicted yourself?  have you found a happy medium?  how do you keep it under control??

phew.  that was a wordy one.