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By Mom Unplugged, August 4, 2010 7:27 am

The August 2010 issue of Family Fun magazine has a great article entitled “The Great Unplugged Challenge” (“Better Than TV” on the cover) about a family who unplugs the TV and computer for 5 days. It would be an interesting and fun read for anyone considering unplugging their family.

Plus, I must admit proudly, that I was interviewed for the article and am mentioned (along with Unplug Your Kids) several times! VERY exciting!!

It’s on news stands now. Enjoy!

(PS.  A big thank you to Jennifer King Lindley for writing this article and for including me and Unplug Your Kids!)

Comments (17)

By Mom Unplugged, May 3, 2010 12:11 pm

One benefit of no TV that had never occurred to me when I began this experiment after the birth of my daughter nine and a half years ago, is the lack of exposure to “sexy teens!”  I am shocked sometimes when I see how some teens and tweens, dress and act.  I really am not a conservative person, in fact I consider myself to be quite liberal, but I do believe that 9 year-old girls are emotionally girls and NOT women.  What ever happened to childhood?

Some might think it backward (please don’t flame me), but I am SO relieved that my 9 1/2 year-old daughter still believes in Santa and the Tooth Fairy.  She still plays dress-up and fairies with her little sister and like-minded friends.  She is not on Facebook, nor has she ever expressed a desire to be.  Don’t berate me for “stunting” my daughter’s social and technological development.  Believe me, I am sure she will “develop socially” as soon as those hormones hit her system!  She also knows how to use a computer just fine thank you.

There are certainly many factors involved.  Her stage of physical development, her personality, and the fact that she attends a very small Montessori School all surely play a role.  But I do truly also believe that part of the fact that she has not yet become interested in “popular teen culture” is that she is not exposed to TV shows and commercials that cause her to emulate those behaviors.

My good friend friend Wishy just sent me a link to a review of an interesting-sounding book by Leonard Sax, the author of Boys Adrift: The Five Factors Driving the Growing Epidemic of Unmotivated Boys and Underachieving Young Men.  His new book is about girls:  Girls on the Edge: The Four Factors Driving the New Crisis for Girls-Sexual Identity, the Cyberbubble, Obsessions, Environmental Toxins.  I urge you to read the review and see what you think.

Meanwhile, I hope that my little girls stay little girls for as long as they need to.

Comments (10)

By Mom Unplugged, September 30, 2009 6:55 pm

There it is.  The Enchanted Bookshelf.  It looks pretty ordinary, doesn’t it?  And believe me, it is not usually that tidy.   Despite its modest appearance, this humble bookshelf has been key in inspiring my 7 year-old son to read.

The bookcase is right next to his bed, within arm’s reach.  He doesn’t even have to get out of bed to pull a book off the shelf.  I keep it well-stocked with a varied supply of books of different degrees of difficulty.

Obviously I make sure that there are many books at his reading level.  I also throw in some that are more difficult in order to pique his interest and tempt him to challenge himself.  I add a few that are below his level for those days when he wants to breeze through an old favorite.  I’d rather have him read something a little easy on occasion, than read nothing at all.  On the bottom shelf I put a few big, heavy kids’ encyclopedias and books with lots of photographs that are fun and interesting to leaf through.

The shelf’s spell has brought my son’s reading level from barely Bob Books last fall to beyond the Magic Tree House Series (by Mary Pope Osborne) in just one year.  In fact he recently devoured Vacation Under the Volcano non-stop and proudly announced that he has now read all 28 books in the original Magic Treehouse Series.  For the last few nights, he has read The Children of Noisy Village (by Astrid Lindgren).  Now he appears to have moved on to Lindgren’s Pippi Longstocking, which is one of the more challenging temptations on the shelf.

If you want to give this a try, here are some tips:

• Shelf must be within arm’s reach of bed and preferably facing the bed so the titles are easily visible.

• Keep it well-stocked.

• Vary the reading level.  Most books should be at your child’s current level, plus some more difficult books, and some easier books.

• A basket of children’s magazines on the top is a nice touch and adds even more variety to the reading selections.

• Don’t let the shelf stagnate.  Keep restocking with new books as your child’s skills improve.

• If there is a TV in your child’s room, get rid of it so reading is the ONLY available activity in bed!  (Plus, the electromagnetic waves from the TV will suck all the magical energy out of the Enchanted Shelf.  :-)  )

Comments (15)

By Mom Unplugged, February 5, 2009 9:33 pm

I am depriving my children of an “essential good.”

In Brazil, I might be prosecuted in court.  Did anyone hear this little NPR blurb yesterday?

A Brazilian man missed out on soccer matches, the news and a “popular reality show,” when a store did not replace his faulty TV.  The judge found in favor of the man, ruling that in modern times, TV is an “essential good.”

Are those of us who do not have TV in our homes, guilty of child abuse?  Are we depriving our little ones of an “essential good?”

What about those whose children (TV in the house or not) miss Sponge Bob, Hannah Montana and PBS.  OK, Sponge Bob and Hannah Montana are arguable…but PBS?  What about Discovery?  Is censorship of our children depriving them of an “essential good?”

Am I depriving my children of educational/cultural experiences by not having TV at all?

I wish we could elect to get a few select Discovery Channel, National Geographic, PBS, History Channel shows without receiving all the other stuff.  But even those channels can be edgy at times.  We were away recently and the only thing on History (or was it Discovery?) was the history of torture devices.  Another of those educational channels had a show about Hitler.

I am not depriving my children by having a TV-free home.  Culturally they get a lot on the playground:  they know about Sponge Bob and Hannah Montana.  As far as education goes, my kids get a huge amount of that from school and reading books, just like kids did before TV.

Am I depriving my children of an “essential good?”  Personally, I think not.

Comments (14)

By Mom Unplugged, December 22, 2008 8:51 pm

As a child, I remember Christmas being so exciting that I could hardly sleep the night before. We’d have a tree, Christmas stockings and yummy turkey.  My Dad would always design a “trail” for me -  a treasure hunt with clues – to lead me to my biggest present.  Dessert was always my mother’s homemade Christmas pudding with lots of thick cream, almond paste cloaked Christmas cake, and tiny, flaky mince pies (my parents were from England).

As an adult, I managed to spend most of my Christmases at home with my mother and sister (my parents were divorced by then) where it would always be the same as I remembered (minus the trail).

This will be the fourth Christmas since the death of my mother.  Each year, my sister and I have struggled with how to make Christmas like we remembered.  For a variety of reasons, the first two years were fairly miserable.  Last year, I just ran away from it all and ignored Christmas as much as I could.

This year, I feel brave enough to try it again.  It will be different.  My sister and I have decided that we can’t recreate the same thing without my mother.  Those days are gone.  I need to do something new (but with a few old elements?).

Those of you who have been reading this blog for a long time (at least a year) may remember last year’s  Christmas/Holidays Unplugged series, so perhaps you know of my internal struggles.  I want to create lovely memories and traditions for my children, but hate the commercialism and lack of any meaning.

I think that writing that series of posts really helped me prioritize and come up with a plan.  A “year off” from Christmas helped a lot too.

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The plan this year is as follows:

- Tree: Thin tree that needed to be cut from our property anyway – read more: An Ugly Christmas Tree.

- Child Presents: Christmas stockings plus one gift each for the kids from Santa, and a few from us.

NOTE:  Without TV, my kids don’t really have specifics on what they want…which is wonderful and difficult at the same time.  They sat on Santa’s lap at our town Christmas tree lighting and both asked for “a surprise.”  I wonder how many kids do that?

- Adult Presents: Christmas stockings all around.  I do the children, my sister and my husband.  My sister does her significant other and me.  I love the challenge of finding cool little things that they might like that would fit in the tiny space of a stocking.  It seems fun and not commercially excessive.

Otherwise, we are not doing adult gifts this year.  We are all in the very fortunate position (especially fortunate in light of this year’s economy) of being able to buy whatever we need, and I hate shopping out of a “need to buy something” mentality.

In lieu of gifts, each adult will do a donation to charity for each other adult (to that other adult’s favorite charity).  I have even gotten a few other relatives on board with this (even for the kids) which certainly lightens the gift receiving (and giving) burden, is much more in the spirit of the season, and makes me feel that we are actually doing good for the world rather than doing good for Walmart.

- Food: I think I’ll get a small, fresh turkey from our local market (but I’d better get on that right away, especially since the weather is forecast to be lousy).  I’ll try to keep it somewhat simple because I want to enjoy the day and not spend it mostly in the kitchen as I remember my mother doing.

Of course, if I can’t get to the store for food, we’ll be having leftovers for Christmas.  But snowed-in with leftover pasta might actually make for a completely fun and memorable Christmas!

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This is my overall plan.  It may need refining next year…or maybe I’ll just want to run away again.  I don’t know.  I’ll tell you all how it goes.

Good luck defining (or redefining) your celebration.  Happy holidays to all!