Report out on screen free week

Well, the kids and I again "celebrated" screen-free week, an event put on by the Campaign for a Commercial Free Childhood.

I gave up TV, Facebook, and Candy Crush, except for what I needed to do to "conduct business" like communicating on two events that are being planned through FB.  I did not give up my cell phone for calls or texts, nor did I give up email.  Too much "business" being taken care of there.

The kids gave up TV and tablet.

I believe my experience this year was similar to last year.  It was a complete relief to stop checking FB all day long, and playing Candy Crush.  I believe those things are fun and useful (for escapism) in small doses, but they so easily become bad habits that take up more time than necessary!  Checking FB at long stop lights is obsessive!  I'm again going to pledge to TRY to only check FB (scrolling and commenting/liking posts) once or twice a day.  And only play a bit of Candy Crush.  (Haven't figured out how to control/quantify that yet.)

Not watching TV was good and bad.  I read a book in a few days which is unheard of for me - and very enjoyable!  But I really did miss that one hour of TV cuddled up with Dick before bed every night.  True confessions - I did cheat and watch about three or four hours of TV - one or two Sons of Anarchy which Dick and I are watching on Netflix, and a movie on Saturday night.  :-)

I also missed TV for the kids a bit.  Last year after screen free week the kids and I decided together that they would watch three shows a day - which amounts to about 66 minutes (three 22 min shows).  Some days that seems like too much.  Other days we all "need" it.  It's nice downtime for the kids after playing outside, after preschool, or any other active day.

I just asked them what they thought about screen free week and they both said pretty strongly that they didn't like it!  I did get Jackson to agree that sometimes if he watches too much TV he feels tired.  I think I got them to agree to limit themselves to two shows per day at least one day per week.  I'm happy with that.  I still think that going screen free for a week is a nice way to "reboot" and remind all three of us that we can find other things to do to relax and spend on our time on.