*This is a collaborative post
When you are working from home, devices are the focus of the entire household, especially when you’ve got young children. The hardest thing is ensuring that we all don’t sit around and absorb the enticing glow of our computers, phones, or tablets. It’s all about having healthy limits. The fact is that we all feel the addiction to our devices and it can be hard to make that break. So what does it really take for us to start having a healthy relationship away from devices and computers?
Childproofing (and Adult-Proofing) Our Devices
This is a very beneficial place to begin. If your child loves using your laptop and needs to use it for school work, but it invariably clogs up your hard drive with a variety of malware, you can go to this page to learn how to remove it. There are other things that we can do such as create a limited access account and secure sensitive files and folders. Sometimes, the best way to keep us and our children away is to make sure that our devices are not just childproof on occasion, but adult-proof as well!
Changing Our Routines
This can be a challenging thing to put in place, but we have to remember that we all can benefit from changing our routine, especially if we get to the point where we are sitting around without a phone within our peripheries even though we’re not using them. It is important for us all to set an example and ensure that we don’t rely on our devices so our children don’t start to rely on theirs, but this is where changing all routines can make a big difference. When we change our daily routines and occupy our lives with other things that don’t involve gadgets, it can help us to understand that we are all relying too much on screens. We have to remember that it takes a while for a habit to embed, but when habits are in place, they can be a lot harder to break.
Analogue Alternatives
If you are all trying to get away from computers or devices as a family, one of the best things you can do is to start looking for analogue versions of things. It is easier than ever to get books online or on our phones, but if we’re trying to make that break, getting into the habit of reading as a family may seem somewhat old-fashioned, and even strange to your children, but when you get into the habit of doing this, you may find that it’s quality family time that you have never had before. When your children are old enough you can get into reading, or if your children are still learning to read you can read together. There is an abundance of benefits to learning to read from a book rather than a device, especially when it comes to engaging with the material.
It is all one of those relationships we all know we need to limit. It can be a long road but for the sake of your children and yourselves, as a family, you could benefit from stepping away from devices.