Ten Days Later...

Being gentle with our kids and ourselves spending time online

Aaaaand we’re back to unlimited screen time. It was a learning experience that lasted about 3 days. We bickered, we fought, I nagged, there was a lot of eye rolling. We both agreed that hard rules don’t make a lot of sense in a non-authoritarian household. So there was some benefit at least: we learned what doesn’t work.

I had some more thoughts on the online time thing I think are worth sharing as well. On a recent podcast episode, grown unschooler and SDE advocate Bria Bloom mentioned in passing that our kids’ reluctance to participate in activities outside the home might just be a response to the challenges we’ve all been facing with over the past two years as we process living in relative isolation because of the pandemic. She mentioned it so nonchalantly, but it rang a bell in my head. Not only are my kids not interested in outside the home activities, they seem almost uninterested in finding friends or community of any kind.

Bria’s words helped me realize that my kids’ disinterest isn’t because they’re broken because of homeschooling (obv this was where my brain went first) or even because they’re anti-social, but because they’ve been forced into isolation for the last two years and are feeling overwhelmed coming out of this stage of their lives. And, I mean, for my youngest, it’s been almost half his life! For my oldest, he’s found friends online - some of the best friends he’s ever had - in an environment where he feels safe and secure, where he can duck out any time he wants and no one will criticize his need for space. And now I’m asking him to sacrifice time with those friends to move into spaces that are unfamiliar and uncomfortable at a time when he’s vulnerable and life is full of change. When I think about it, this is kind of ridiculous of me.

What’s more: I’m asking myself to make this same change! It’s not just kids that have connected with friends online during the pandemic - we have all shifted our social habits from in person to virtual. We’ve all found ways to cope in isolation with new hobbies and pastimes, placing more focus on rest and paring back unnecessary activities from our day to day lives. And now that I’ve gotten used to chatting with friends over Instagram or Facebook to help me feel connected, I’m getting burnt out from social media as it becomes an increasingly toxic place.

If you’re like me, you’ve probably been trying to spend less time doom scrolling online, but what about those friendships that we’ve made? What about those hobbies we’ve picked up from watching others online? We’ve all been working so hard to learn how to be on our own, to find ways to still feel connected, and now those connections come with a price that feels unhealthy. It’s a hard place to be!

Where am I going with this? I’m not sure. Maybe I should learn to be more gentle with myself and with my family as we all adjust to what this new normal looks like. Maybe I need to check in more to make sure I’m not jumping into those uncomfortable situations too often in search for that sense of community that I’m missing from pre-pandemic days. Maybe it’s okay to find that sense of community both on and offline. Maybe there is some good to social media, not just the bad.

Maybe we’re all just doing the best we can muddling through this life and the last thing we need to do is try and push our kids (and ourselves) into a world that feels a bit unfamiliar or scary. Maybe life is just plain hard right now and we all need a little more love and a little less criticism.