How To Replace Screens With Books

I ’ve found that the biggest hindrance to starting a new routine with my kids is almost always screens. If I want them to spend more time outside, we have to turn off the TV. If I want to have conversations around the dinner table we have to make sure there’s no tablets or phones with us. If I want them to read more, I have to give them opportunities to pick up a book; in other words, opportunities without a device in their hand. Because the truth is that all of us (even us adults!) are highly unlikely to do something worthwhile like reading if we have the option to scroll social media, play a mind-numbing game, or binge-watch a show. Yet I know that these activities don’t bring true rest or growth, for myself or my kids. If you have begun to feel like screens are “the enemy” in your home, the thing that is keeping your kids from thriving, I want to offer some tips that may help. I also want to share that my family wrestles with this just like all of today’s generation does. We have failed in this area many, many times, and even today we are constantly battling against the pull of technology. I think it’s important for us to remember that technology is constantly changing and that what works for our family in one season won’t work in the next. We have to be vigilant to monitor how our children are functioning and how our home feels. The more that we practice this, the easier I believe it becomes. Here’s some ideas that have helped my family; take what works for your family in your particular season and leave the rest!

1. Set a specific time when screens are allowed and stick to it. I won’t give many general statements when it comes to screens; I don’t think it’s fair for us to look at other parents and say they have to abide by our family’s convictions around things like screen time. In addition to this, my oldest child is only eight, so I haven’t dealt with the ultra-challenging relationship between screens and teenagers; while I have strong convictions about what this will look like for our kids when they reach that age, I have also learned the hard way that I am most likely to “eat my words” when I make predictions about what parenting will look like before actually reaching that stage. All that being said, I do think we have solid research to show that if screens are allowed to be a free-for-all (meaning your children can have them whenever they want to), there are huge negative repercussions for our children. I have found that we have a lot more peace in our home when we set specific times where those things are allowed. Some examples of how this has worked for our family during various seasons of parenting (although we have never done all of these at once): 1) one episode of a cartoon before bed; 2) tablets during the little one’s nap (so everybody can get a little quiet time); 3) Saturday morning cartoons (like we did as kids! Remember just because cartoons are available all the time doesn’t mean we have to watch them all the time); 4) Friday night family movie nights; 5) sick days. Experiment with what could be a good rhythm for your family based on your family’s convictions, schedules, and ages.

2. Don’t introduce new forms of technology until you have a good handle on current ones. Parents, please hear this loud and clear from me: your kids don’t need Every. Single. Device. Known. To . Mankind. We live in a culture today where we are marketed at CONSTANTLY through the online world. Please don’t believe the lies about your kids being smarter or more well-rounded because of exposure to TV, ipads, computers, and video games. There is ZERO research to back this up and all the research points in the OPPOSITE direction. I get that there will be seasons where you feel like it might be a good fit to add a new device to your home; but if you feel like you are struggling with boundaries around the devices you currently have, then I’m going to get bossy and tell you to wait. I think this is especially important to remember as we approach the holiday months. A couple years ago we considered getting Osmo for our kids tablets; it would have been super easy to tell ourselves we should just go for it; after all, tons of homeschoolers were raving about it being a great resource for learning. But our kids already had Amazon kids tablets that were on WAY too much and were watching TV a lot more than we wanted them to, so we made the decision to go an entirely different route for Christmas. That was actually the first year that we highly simplified our children’s Christmas gifts, and the results were amazing! Not only did our kids enjoy their Christmas morning MORE with fewer and simpler gifts, but we suddenly had the margin to begin dealing with the tech monster. Our kids need less, not more, from us.

3. Do a technology “fast” as a family. In Grumpy Mom Takes a Holiday, Valerie Woerner says we should “test our vices.” The idea is to take away the thing we really, really love (coffee, I’m looking at you) for a short season to see how we react to being without it. Newsflash: if we can’t make it a week without our phone, coffee, or chocolate, then that thing has become an idol. My family did a screen fast for a week last year, and it ended up being a wonderful reset for us. We came away from it ready to put new boundaries in place around our screens and with better habits around reading and playing outside.

4. Use technology to aid reading. This post has probably seemed pretty anti-technology, but I do want to point out that technology CAN be useful in helping our kids read more. Audiobooks are super important for kids and can be a great use of screens both together and separate. Some kids also enjoy reading e-books, but I will caution you not to buy technology for your kids thinking it will get them reading more (speaking as a mama who has fallen into this trap herself). My kids will occasionally read something on their tablet, but in general I’ve noticed that digital reading has the same pitfall for them as it does for us as adults: loss of attention and the tendency to jump from one thing to the next instead of reading for longevity.

No matter how you feel about screens they aren’t going anywhere. Just as we teach our kids to brush their teeth everyday and choose healthy, nourishing foods, we have to teach them how to have a healthy relationship with technology. This involves both setting boundaries for them and also modeling similar boundaries in our own lives. We plant the seeds now and trust that the Lord will do the growing so the next generation can hopefully have a better relationship with screens than our current generation does.

For further research on this topic I highly recommend the 1000 Hours Outside podcast as well as the books Screen Kids by Gary Chapman and Digital Detox by Molly DeFrank.