Sometime I go EEEEEk.

EEEEEk.
What gets me more than the casual acceptance and recommendation of arbitrary limitations is the characterization of allowing children choices as "plonking a 3, 4, 5, 10 year old in front of the television/google."

Can you imagine ANYone "plonking" a ten year old in front of google? And what? Demanding he look something up? But I have seen kids that young have a BLAST with google and other search functions, about games, or YouTube, or NetFlix.

If they can look up game hints at ten, they will be able to look up building codes or disease treatments or various translations of Bible passages on their own anytime thereafter, given resources. Practicing on something that might seem "loose, easy and unnecessary" can *BE* what is needed for them to be competent, functional workers when they're older. And I won't say "when they're grown," because my kids were competent functional workers when they were mid-teens, every single one of them.

So when people who haven't had a child who is mid-teens disparages my knowledge in light of their paranoid theories, sometimes I go EEEEEk.

Sandra
2011

Plonking a child down in front of the television
is where I found it, but the original is here:
on Always Learning,
wherein the rant is all one paragraph.

photo by Sandra Dodd, of a granddaughter playing a game, a husband reading the news, and the TV was playing "Pupstruction" for another grandchild not appearing in that photo

Candy, TV, books and broccoli

Jo Isaac wrote:

While Kai and I were watching Inside Out yesterday, they had a part where broccoli is in the 'disgust' part of Riley's emotions. Kai loves broccoli - it's one of his favourite foods and the first thing he eats if it's on a plate. He said that parents make broccoli disgusting in kids heads because they force them (the kids) to eat it.

In the same way we can make broccoli seem 'disgusting' by forcing it down our kids throats, we can make TV seem more 'attractive' by setting it up as a limited resource with apparently magical powers of 'distraction'.

By giving broccoli the same status as candy, and TV the same status as books and board games, children are free to make the choices that are best for them, and learn the way they learn best.

—Jo Isaac
(original, on facebook)

SandraDodd.com/joisaac
photo by Sarah S.

Healthier and happier

Not only are our food choices healthier but since I have stopped controlling sleep and chores and T.V. watching and video games our family is healthier and happier. It didn't happen overnight but it's been like this long enough that I can't imagine our lives any other way.

—Gail H.
years ago

That's the end of something longer, at
SandraDodd.com/eating/sweets
"True Tales of Kids Turning Down Sweets"
image by Jen Keefe

Vibrant, healthy and active

I can see how vibrant, healthy, and active both of them are. They love to go outside, run with their friends, ride bikes, dig in the dirt, go swimming, catch fireflies, climb trees, and tons of other things. And they also love watching TV and playing computer games. I can look at them directly, without any fear, and see that they are whole and that our relationship is remaining intact because I respect the things they love and support choices they make."

—Susan May

Either/Or Thinking and "Screen Time"
photo by Sarah Dickinson

The children described aren't the same as those pictured,
but they're all unschoolers.
__

Natural Balance

If you limit it, they will want more.
If you "unlimit" it they will fill up and be done.

They can only make their own choices if they're allowed to make their own choices.
I don't think balance will come from limitations as well as some people wish it would.

I had a niece not allowed to eat sugar at all. NOTHING with sugar. A little hippie kid in the late 1960's, early 1970's.

She came to stay with us for a few days when she was six. We were keeping to her mom's rules about sugar.

We found her in the field, squatted over a 5-lb. bag of sugar, eating it with both hands like a monkey, as fast as she could before she'd get caught.

That wasn't balance.

Or maybe it was. It was the balance of all her deprivation.

My kids have come to their own balance with food, TV, activities, sleep, because they're allowed to make their own choices.

---

The quote is from an online discussion in August, 2001, ten years ago. The story of the sugar was when I was 22 and in my first marriage, long before I had children with Keith.

A related link is SandraDodd.com/balance
photo by Sandra Dodd