The Tiny Girl Chronicles: My daughter and mother had a phone date to talk when I picked her up today. Due to some things changing around with our schedule, when my mother called, I was sitting in the basement at our house and my husband was on the way to pick her up so I sent her over to his phone to have her phone conversation with her on the ride home. Apparently, they had a nice time catching up as they rode home on the nice, sunny Friday afternoon. A very nice way to kick off the weekend.
The Big Boy Update: My son said he believed in moderation today on the ride home. He was talking to his father over the phone and me in the driver's seat. He said he wanted to have screens in balance with other things like playing with friends outside. He was going to go out any time they knocked on the door. He was going to go knock on other doors of friends. He also said it would work well if we could give him a reason to get off the computer that might help motivate him and "train his brain" to break from the current activity. He said he wouldn't yell at us (which happens when he gets upset, even though that's not what he intends to do, high emotions take over sometimes.) He was going to have a balance and as such, could we not subject any specific rules about times or hours he should or shouldn't be on the computer or other screens. Tonight after asking and then reminding and then telling him to get off the computer by his father, I came in and said it had been a full additional thirty minutes, and whatever it was he 'had to finish' was well and truly beyond any level of reasonable expectation. He jumped up, turned off the computer, and then proceeded to yell at us. He had been on the computer for six hours straight, stopping five minutes to eat a hotdog. He yelled at me, said I was mean and tried to mock me by imitating my gesticulations. Said all sorts of things that now that he was off the computer, he felt sure were the case even though they hadn't been. He was livid, wanted to leave, insisted he just wanted to go to sleep and we were keeping him from doing so (except he had just been on the computer with no signs of stopping). All his reasons were defeated. His behavior was the exact thing he said he was not going to do. His disrespect of me had me now the gatekeeper of any computer time instead of his father. Tomorrow, he will have to have a lot of that other half of the balance he talked about and a whole lot of respect if he expects to have any computer time. The thing is, his ideas today were such good ones. I hope he can execute on them better in the future, because I'd like to have him more in control of reasonable screen time himself.
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