I read a great post about busy hands and creative minds here. Amy is amazing, and I love her writing.
This post resonated on a number of levels for me – minus the pranking. We weren’t pranksters as kids, and I got my mom’s uncanny ability to fly off the handle if a prank catches me too off guard. (Thanks Mom! 😉
One way I related with this post was the busy hands, free mind thought. When I get my hands busy doing the dishes, scrubbing the bathroom, hanging the diapers, folding the laundry – any of the mundane tasks that don’t require much thinking – my mind wanders off on vast adventures that become fodder for a novel. Or my mind narrows in on a parenting issue and soon, I find myself with several posts to write, and a solution to a problem. Plus, if I’m feeling down, getting my hands busy seems to lift my mood and make me cheery once more.
The other thing that really struck me has to do with kids these days. With all of their electronic devices, and video games and what not, kids today don’t experience this busy-hand, free-mind phenomenon. In fact, kids today expect to be entertained around the clock. Take away the entertainment, and my stepson is lost. He has to have his phone or the television or the computer just to function.
I’m old fashioned enough to think that the smart phone should be allowed to occupy thirty minutes to an hour of his day for “playing” with. Then, it should be put up. Yep, I mean no texting, no games or videos, nothing. He can make a call, to a real person, but that would be it. Of course, I’m the only one in our circle that feels this way, so it’s kind of a moot point. I have tried limiting the phone use, and taking the phone away for the afternoon hours, but the result it not pleasant.
My goal with the younger kids it to not start such a bad habit. I don’t want them to have phones until they are older (15 or 16) and if I am paying for it, it will probably be a generic flip phone. That’s right, one that lets you check in and maybe do some texting. The 7 year old and 5 year old don’t get much TV time, either. They watch a couple programs with us, and occasionally some cartoons, but all total it’s less than 4 hours most weeks.
Now, I will admit this: the 7 year old has a tablet, but he is limited to 30 minutes or an hour, and he only gets to play with it during a few days each week.
Kids must learn to entertain themselves. Kids must be encouraged to think. I do think kids need exposure to technology, because using it, and being proficient with it will be necessary for their careers, of that I’m almost certain. But that doesn’t mean unsupervised, unending hours using this technology.
And this all answers the question I’ve been asking for weeks, “Where is all of this laziness coming from?” Electronics are not evil, but we can all waste our days and come to expect constant entertainment. This expectation causes people to become addicted, in the unhealthiest of ways, to their devices. Take the devices away, and the result is not pleasant. People, adults and kids alike, are losing the busy-hands, free-minds way of doing things. Instead, their minds are busy and their hands are free – which seems to result in a highly addictive, exceptionally lazy society.
How do you handle the entertainment battle in your home?
Regina Walker 
What a timely post! LOL, my neighbor is out of town, so I was cleaning her stalls this morning, and she has NPR on in the barn. They were doing a discussion with a child psychologist (I think, or some kind of expert, I didn’t hear where she was introduced), on this very topic. So I was thinking about it, thinking, what will I do, in the future, when I (hopefully) have moppets of my own to educate.
I only caught a few snippets, but she was talking about how the moving/flashing screens of computers, tv, laptops, tablets, phones, etc. actually cause the pleasure centers in our brains to light up, just as though we were using drugs, smoking, drinking, gambling, or any other addictive thing. Not good, and I know from the reading I’ve done in developmental biology that these kinds of chemical signals in a developing brain cause permanent alterations -for good or bad, you aren’t the same person you would have been without the input. Wow -maybe something we don’t want to experiment with in our own kids! She also said that there is no evidence that early use of technology makes kids better able to learn to utilize it in the future. No evidence doesn’t mean it doesn’t, of course. Obviously this is an emerging field of knowledge. Still, I can’t recall ever doing a thing on the computer until at least second or third grade, when we started playing Oregon Trail in computer lab. Oh, nostalgia! 🙂 At any rate, the lack of early exposure doesn’t seem to done me any harm, I’m computer literate.
So, I think, when I have kids of my own, I will definitely be very strictly limiting ‘screen time’ as well -and no doubt my biggest challenge will be setting a good example by not spending half my time on laptop or phone! I do think I will start them on typing programs earlish, though -as soon as the seem to be developing finger dexterity. Cause I know they will be on FB eventually, and if my kids want to be quick with their posts, they can use full sentences and correct spelling while typing 90 WPM. That will definitely be non-negotiable. 🙂
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Kudos, dear cousin! For thinking ahead and forming a plan now. I didn’t use a computer regularly until I was about 12 years old, and I, too, am computer literate. I wholeheartedly agree on the full sentences and correct spelling – in fact, I’ve already told the younger boys what I expect. I figure I’ll keep telling them the rules, since they keep asking for a FB. Plus, I’m using the terms of service as my ally. Having a FB is not negotiable until they are 13. Once they are 13 and old enough for FB rules, then we will discuss in detail whether or not they should have their own FB, and how to use it responsibly.
With all that said, are you sure I have to set the example by not being consumed by technology myself? 😉 just kidding, of course.
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