It sounds strange to write that as the title to this post, but it’s a reality that has taken years to cultivate. To be honest it wasn’t at a time when people were intentionally trying to keep kids off of video games and screens, and so in many ways, it wasn’t intentional for us to keep our kids away from video games. Some parents had rules for screen time, but it wasn’t at the height of the research that we have today.

It was something that naturally developed in our family. I’m writing this post in this way now because I know people are searching for help with reorienting their family life, what they do when they have restful time together. You’ll see as the post progresses that this doesn’t mean that we don’t watch shows, not at all. However, shows, devices, and video games aren’t the center of our time spent as a family. And they aren’t what is driving us away from each other into isolation either.

The early days with streaming shows

Very early on as my eldest son grew from baby to toddler, shows captivated his attention. He loved it when I would put on Paw Patrol and other cartoons that we could stream in the Middle East. As is the case for many parents of this stage, it was also helpful for me that they kept him captivated. It meant I could cook dinner or organize something without disruption and crying. I would get some work done and selfishly let him watch a few more episodes. The problem wasn’t with what he was watching, but with what would happen when I would try to turn off the TV. His response was always strong and overwhelming, and that’s when the tantrums came and made me feel so guilty for keeping him watching longer. He craved the shows and entertainment when we weren’t watching and I could see how clearly, it wasn’t helping his heart.

Instead of instituting a time rule for screen time, we decided to instruct his heart and its response when it was time to turn the TV off. I would let him watch 1 or 2 shows and then would speak to him even through his tantrums after we turned it off. Slowly, he started to say the same things that I was saying to him:

“It’s a privilege to watch a show, so if I want to watch more sometime soon then I need to calm down. The show isn’t the most important thing. Now it’s time to play.”

As we grew as a family, often the kids’ playtime would look like playing like the characters in a show. This opened up a whole new world of imagination and storytelling. In my opinion, their stories were a lot better than the TV shows they were based on.

Then came video games

It was these early experiences with shows that made us tentative to purchase large game systems for our family as they came out. We got a Wii when it came out, but really didn’t use it as a family. Naturally because of that, it didn’t become a way for us to relax as a family when we had downtime together.

We also didn’t see it as the natural next electronic purchase because of our kids stages or ages. Our family friends also may have had video games, but our interactions never revolved around playing them or even having them visible. When my son and daughters would go over to play at a friend’s house, I would chat with the mom and our kids would play with toys and their imaginations. We didn’t put on the TV to give us peace and quiet. It meant that often our children would interrupt us or we would have to mediate a dispute, but we would do that together as moms and then continue on with our conversations.

Choosing to instruct instead of distract

This is an important part of our children’s development. If we never give them the opportunity to face disagreement, their own selfishness, and the need to care for others and share, where will they learn it?

I realized during these developmental stages, that it’s tempting to entertain them and clear out the interruptions by putting them all in front of the TV or a video game, but it wouldn’t be helping them in the long run. It also wouldn’t be helpful to me or our family as a whole.

Just like I learned to instruct my son when I saw his overwhelming response to something that he didn’t like when the TV was shut off, I learned to do that with all of the disputes and tantrums.

Adults all understand when a child is throwing a tantrum- it’s loud and overwhelming. Distraction and praise are not the appropriate way to address behaviors like these. We have to teach our children why it is better to learn how to respond to the needs of others, their own development of character and kindness, and why it’s wrong to respond so selfishly.

Now as adults, we are flabbergasted by people our age struggling to think of others or show self-control and restraint in their own selfish desires. Sometimes that may be because they have been trained through the art of distraction or it could be because they have trained themselves through their addictions to devices and their own comfort. We don’t want to raise our children to manage themselves in that way, and so choose to instruct instead of distracting.

The replacement of those devices with…

All of us crave story. We love story. That’s why we love the shows and video games that we can interact with regularly. It’s a good thing to replace what could be gleaned in enjoyment from devices with really good stories.

When my kids were toddlers, I had a hard time getting them to sit and eat at the table for any length of time. It is foundational to teach them how to do this and not skip this daily investment.

So, while you see many parents pulling out a device to do this, I instead pulled out a good picture book. At these early stages, the good book would usually rhyme. This cadence of story and sound helps a little one pay attention to the story and follow it into the next page. They love songs and can enjoy them because of the rhythm and creativity, the same goes with rhyming. It also makes the story less abstract and more understandable to them. Here are some good books that we loved at that stage:

• All of Julia Donaldson’s books: The Gruffalo, Stick Man, A Squash and a Squeeze, etc.
• Llama, llama books- I could easily get into those and they were great stories based on the kids’ stage of life and experiences.
• Books from shows that they really liked, easily accessed from the library. They love seeing the characters they already know in book form. Our favorites were from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Paw Patrol.

The other thing that we replaced when it could have been easy to distract them with devices was to use our car time to listen to things together. Good music that they loved or good audiobooks. This is the time of life when we really got into Winnie the Pooh because it was so funny to listen to the cast of lovable characters from the original classic by A.A. Milne. Sometime the kids loved audiobooks that were a little hard to listen to for sustained periods like Peppa Pig. We would listen to two or three stories and then transition to music.

Music we loved at this stage:

• Laurie Berkner albums – full of song and story
• Disney Songs from different movies, old and new
• Colin Buchanan – from Australia and wonderful, we listened to all the albums
• Shai Linne – Jesus Kids

Audiobooks from car to home

Listening to audiobooks in the car made it very easy for the kids to start enjoying audiobooks together at home. The ability to listen attentively takes time to develop and so the investment started to pay off as we tried to listen to books during some of our time at home. Magic Treehouse was a good next step once the kids got a little older. They enjoyed listening to Jack and Annie’s adventures.

Reading aloud in general

We would read stories together from the start, but longer stories aloud took time to develop. This became intentional once the kids were school age. I used the same principles that I shared from the beginning. Often using mealtimes to read aloud so that the kids could listen or would let them play with magnets, legos, and toys in their room while I read aloud. These were very chaotic times, but oh so sweet.

What it looks like now

Reading aloud is a little harder for me to do as I have a lot of things to do. We are all working on reading our own things as well, but the togetherness of enjoying a story is so important to us that we use our time together and audiobooks well.

I sew quite a lot in the afternoons and will put on an audiobook for us to enjoy together. That has been really fun and we love finding new stories to enjoy together.

Our favorite time for stories though is on long road trips. We have listened to all of The Wingfeather Saga by Andrew Peterson, The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis and The Lord of the Rings by JRR Tolkein. This is coveted time in a special way because my husband can be a part of our beloved stories.

Replace it with story

This may seem a long way off from what your family time is like and I would encourage you to think about how you can develop your own ways of being a little bookish together. It’s never too late, like really, it’s never too late.