A Twitter exchange got me thinking about screen time in a different light as I’ve been wrestling with the questions of how much/how long/what content…etc…just like every other half-decent parent.
Let me start somewhere else. I happened to see this exchange shortly before giving in to my inner boy and taking my sons to Dave and Buster’s to escape the heat and burn too much money. Mary and I had been once, long ago, probably before a concert on Philly’s Penn’s Landing, I can’t recall. She wasn’t a video gamer, although she had the competitive heart of a gamer. We played an odd horse-racing game that involved feeding and training the horse before the race. We got to name our horse and received a card with her picture and name on it. Ms. Deathray. I kept that card in my wallet for years until the name and everything else wore off. Mary used to bring up the subject of our horse once in a while and we would regret that we hadn’t visited her. A private joke that’s just a bit of ghost now.
I love video games. A good one will consume my time and penetrate my dreams. It’s the oldest secret in storytelling: tell an old story that everyone already knows, even if they’ve never heard it. The stories come from our dreams, so they are more than happy to go home there.
I can recognize when a game gets into my head and begins to take up too much space, but I don’t think children have that governor. Now comes that hard question: As someone who espouses and promotes voluntarism, how much do I impose the lessens I’ve learned and how much do I allow my children to learn those same lessons for themselves? An age-old question that gets really real when your son has tears coming down his face in the ticket redemption store. #BadDad moment number…well, I don’t keep a tally.
Hold on. Let me tie this back to the Twitter exchange. Daring to simplify: analog toys vs. digital toys. What do children crave most? Before we spent hours at D&B: my sons biked around a campground and found some friends (apparently almost fought one), watched me do laundry, had lunch at a legit BBQ joint, visited a butterfly garden, wrestled over a box turtle (I think it’s okay), found some magnificent plums at a roadside stand, visited a library, shopped for a week’s worth of provisions and partook in many samplers at BJ’s Wholesale, and bucket-lined said provisions into our RV.
That should pause you. It pauses me. To paraphrase Jesus: Walk while you have the light.
Mary indulged in life. I did too. When we joined forces, it felt like we were stretching the fabric of each day to its tearing point. I don’t want to slow down. It’s not in my nature and listing one (half) day’s activities before hours of fun on arcade games alerts me to the richness of our lives.
I’m not going to get back to the Twitter exchange in this post, but it did get me thinking about important things.
The fact is that you don’t know what that child who’s on a device has been doing all day. You don’t know what he or she has faced, overcome, had to bear. Same goes for adults. Jesus has taught me to engage, ask questions, get to know people. Their lives are harder than you can imagine. Their pain will seem worse than yours and their achievements greater. Their survival will inspire you. If you listen hard enough and long enough you will learn about generations of hurt.
I’m preaching and I’m not good at practicing. But I’m working on that. You don’t experience pain if you don’t experience love. That’s fundamental, you don’t need faith to see that.
For me, I’ve got that faith and a knowledge that God wants something big out of me. He knows I won’t fold on a hard gamble, better or worse.
I promise to do a post on screen time, I had lots of words on that before I actually started typing.
God bless, I appreciate and thank you,
Jason