Plugged In

“Mommy, if Oscar changes his name he’ll lose all his data,” my four-year old informed me this morning while driving to school.

I chuckled to myself, feeling continually amazed by how easily our young children pick up the language of technology. They live it. We have had to put parental controls on the computer now that my oldest, at the tender age of six, can easily navigate the Web.

While visiting him at school recently, I sat down beside him in the computer lab. Dissatisfied with the choices of learning games on his computer screen, he simply went to the top of his web browser and typed out the URL that he wanted. The kid knows what URL means. He also Googles like a pro but can't really tie his shoelaces just yet.

Part of me gets it. Technology is part of the fabric of our society, and kids need to be able to utilize it in order to fully participate in our world. I am not against technology. I see the great things that it provides. However, there comes a point where the constant stimulation that internet, TV, and smartphones provide become a sort of ball and chain.

When my three little boys watch TV or play at the computer I could light something on fire and they would barely take note. By plugging in, they tune out everything else. The more time they spend gazing at a screen, the less time they have to play with each other, read a book, jump in the leaves, or build a tower.

So, we instituted “unplugged time” each day. I had a somewhat romantic vision of this, much like when I was pregnant and had the delusional idea that my children would quietly sit playing with wooden toys, looking like a vision plucked out of a Pottery Barn catalog. Of course they'd put all of their toys away each day in neatly-labeled, attractive bins too. That didn’t quite work out as planned, as you can see from my disaster of a playroom. Sure, there are plenty of wholesome, developmentally sound playthings in there. However, you might not notice them with all the blinking, bright, noisy and half-broken toys scattered among them.

Smug declarations of how I’d parent were much more frequent before I actually had kids. I swore our kids wouldn’t watch TV. This worked pretty well for my oldest, who had plenty of my attention because I had way more time on my hands and no squabbling siblings to soothe as I made dinner.

It’s a slippery slope when you set the bar too high, isn’t it? The TV is on too much. They love their Leapsters and other “learning toys” that I used to ban because I felt that they were a poor substitute for actually interacting with the world. Perhaps my expectations were too unrealistic or perhaps all the ideas that sound so good on paper don’t matter so much when you’re an exhausted parent who just wants a little peace at the end of the afternoon. Did I cave too easily?

I thought a few times about getting rid of the television entirely. What would our lives be like without one? How could I live without Real Housewives of Beverly Hills?

I remember a little boy whose brainy parents lived without a television when I was a kid. This was an insane concept to me as a child. I remember though that every time he’d come to our house to play he would refuse to run around with us. He would stare at our television the entire time, transfixed by it. I’m sure if his parents had banned junk food he might have been gorging on candy.

Unplugged time is going fairly well. When the Wii, computer, and TV go dark the kids do play better. They build and pretend and interact. But I’m not willing to throw out our technological toys just yet; partly because I enjoy them, partly because they really are a crutch for when the boys overwhelm me. The “perfect parent” that I used to want to be would probably never say that. I’m the parent who is doing the best I can, with a little help from Super Mario Brothers from time to time.