screen free

Over the weekend, I noticed a few articles pop into my social media feeds about this week being Screen-Free Week. To be honest, I usually ignore things like that – I tend to think parenting is challenging enough on its own without creating arbitrary/ artificial reasons to make it harder. That said I’ve felt a nagging sense for awhile now that our family could really benefit from a screen-time break, so intrigued I took the bait and clicked on a few of the links then impulsively decided we would just do it.

So as of today, our family is screen free! Well kind of … I certainly spend a lot of time at my job looking at screens (I play a lawyer in real life). I’m also writing this post and not going to stop reading my Kindle before bed. And Mr. P is traveling for work this week, so I will not say no to FaceTime chats with Dad (at least not because of Screen-Free Week – perhaps because FaceTime always makes my kids a little crazy).

Speaking of Mr. P traveling for work, well, that makes this screen-free challenge a little more challenging for us, as I admittedly rely on TV to help me get things done when I’m solo parenting. One night in though, and I’m happy to admit we survived without screens. And (perhaps not surprisingly) my kids all went down for bed with relatively little fuss and my older 2 boys even played (mostly nicely) together with their trucks and cleaned them up before bed. The nicer weather makes me feel like this challenge may be possible- you know, as long as none of us gets sick or something!

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In the interest of full disclosure, I straight up bribed my oldest boy into participating in this challenge with me. Big P is 4 1/2, and he’s at that age where he has strong opinions and is much more cooperative if he buys in and feels ownership over what we’re doing. I had planned to buy them some Nerf guns to celebrate the end of the school year and the start of summer anyhow, so I decided that was the perfect bribe. You got to do what you got to do.

On our agenda this week instead of screens: playing outside, cooking and eating meals together, reading books, playing games, and doing art. Simple stuff but often the things that fall by the wayside when we turn the TV or the iPads/ Kindles on.

If you want to read more about screen-free week, check out these links:

The Family Guide to a Great Screen-Free Week

101 Screen-Free Activities

Why TV and Games Compromise Academics & Values

Kids Arguing? This NO TECHNOLOGY Week Will Change That

Is your family participating in screen-free week? Have you ever tried something like that in the past? If so, chime in below! I’d love to hear how it’s going or how it went. I’ll plan on checking back in mid-week with an update on how it’s going at my house (assuming I survive that is).

*First image from the Screen-Free Week website presented by Campaign for a Commercial Free Childhood