Screen-Free Childhood

[Phoebe]

El Jefe, you certainly do not owe me an apology. It's a discussion, things get said, it's not always easy to understand what people are talking about. As long as you don't think I was trying to shame people for their parenting or bodies or whatever, then we're good. And believe me, I am really not trying to do that. Like I said, there were long swaths of life where I showered only because I could park my kid in front of a segment of wonderpets or whatever. She was large and wily and could escape from things, at which point she would just run off and who knew what might happen. Wonderpets was the golden ticket to getting ready in the morning, which also meant I didn't have to take her to day care before getting dressed for work, which meant I got to spend more time with her overall. These are things one may have to do, and sometimes you deliberately choose to hand the kid your phone to play chess with because you suck at chess and TIRE OF IT, and yeah, there are lots of people in the world who criticize every little choice like that parents (and especially mothers) make. That is not my aim and I am so far past capable of feeling guilty about things like that, it's hilarious.

Same with the body and physical health issues. These are causally complex things. Links between health problems like obesity and type 2 diabetes and the amount of time kids are spending with their screens definitely concern me; however, these might both be effects of other more fundamental causes, and that's but one way things get complicated. What bothers me is, there's still a causal link, so it seems like caution is needed. The cognitive stuff seems clearer because you can more readily isolate the screens as a factor and explain possible mechanisms. Even so, these things did not cause me to want to get rid of all the screens in the house, though they did make me want to limit the ways they were being used. It was really the specific circumstances of my kids and their wee odd brains, motivating me to reconsider these things. And my own life - omg, I often feel positively chained to the computer to the point of torment. I use the crap out of VTT so I can do things like handle emails while walking the dog, but even so there is little way to part company with the screen for big chunks of work life. It sucks. This is actually one reason I enjoy this here website, because it's like "do a couple unpleasant things, knock it out, and then your reward is to do a thing here you find amusing". I find myself doing a lot of "hurry up and wait" activities, too, and usually have a book or knitting, but it's often about the Phone. The Phone has an outsized presence for someone so annoying. I would just like to get away from all this, basically.