“You shall teach them diligently to your children and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, when you walk by the way, when you lie down, and when you rise up” Deuteronomy 6:7
I have mentioned on here over and over the blessings we have received by not having television stations for at least twenty-eight of our thirty years of marriage. (We tried it a couple of times for a few months.) Now there is so much more to contend with than television programming!
That is why we advocate a techno-free zone for family talking times–a spot or two in which you sit with no technology drawing you away from the people you are supposed to be spending time with! For us, this means gathering in the living room (where we have no computers; we don’t have a television, so it’s mostly just one of the four computers vying for our attention–besides cell phones, of course!). We put away our cells and just sit and “be.” (We also like to gather around the dining room table for games in the evenings and our room (with the laptops closed!) late at night..and don’t forget around the fire or the porch!)
If there is one thing I love to do with our kids–it is “being.” Today Ray called from work to double check our schedule for the ten days that Kara is home–and he said it once again, “We have to have three or four evenings to just ‘be.’ We can’t book every moment she is home.”
Just being…being together…being family…being there for each other…being a sounding board…being whatever our kids need–preferably in a techno-free zone sometimes!