Coming Home: Chronicling the (re)creation of the JP Green House A Grist Special Series

Dispatch from the virtual front lines of parenting

The fight to save childhood 8

Posted 7:44 AM on 11 Sep 2009
by Andrée Zaleska
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Boys will be boys ... online or off.School started this week. We have two fourth-graders and a second-grader. Ken has the misfortune to be driving a carpool that involves four boys and two schools and takes about an hour round-trip. I am biking to work every day now, because we’re cutting back to just the one beat-up station wagon for transportation. Today I was almost hit by a Hummer.

New school year, new shoes, old lunchboxes, and a new household rule that we’re all wrestling with: No internet access except Saturday mornings.

One of our children—and I think it’s fair to keep this private, so let’s say child #1—was developing an addictive relationship with online gaming. When given the opportunity, he would do nothing but play games on the internet; easily twelve hours at a stretch. Child #2 was also a fan of gaming, but didn’t seem quite so hypnotized—he would cut himself off after two hours. Child #3, who is garrulous and loves sports, was fed up with #s 1 and 2 for being “boring and stupid”—he couldn’t get them to go outside and play much.

We, the parents and parental-figures in the lives of all three, were feeling uncomfortable about the clearly deteriorating situation with our Gamer. He was pale and spindly, and irritable whenever the games were taken away.

But let’s face it, we all love to have those children who “self-entertain.” We like it when they play alone, or nicely with others, and let us do our own thing much of the time. This is especially true in a house of three boys. Child #1, the Gamer, was pretty easy that way. Just the opposite is true of child #3, who is either talking or moving at all times, and to whom we sometimes say, “Wouldn’t you like to go watch TV for a while?”

Oftentimes, the problem of too much screen-time in a household is really a parental problem. Not only are we all addicted, to a certain degree (I’ll admit my fondness for crafting two to three Facebook posts a day), but we have lost much of the community that made it easier to raise children. It’s well-documented elsewhere (see Robert Putnam’s work) and I won’t rant, but without safe neighborhoods and at-home parents around, our kids’ lives are quite attenuated, and they rightly expect us to entertain them within these limitations.

Part of the JP Green House project is to create a better childhood for our three boys, and any local kids who want in on it. Looking at the situation we had gotten ourselves into with #1, 2, and 3, it was inevitable that we’d have to fess up to our own bad habits around screens. So we called Comcast and explained: No we don’t want cable TV and 144 channels, along with high speed internet, thank you—just turn it off ... no really, turn it off! What do you mean we can’t just have a phone line?

It isn’t pretty. Day 1 of No Internet found #1 first sulking in bed, then raging at his dad, and then secretly staying up until he thought everyone was asleep, and nabbing a cell-phone to play games on.

Day 2 was better: all three kids were out in the street on their bikes, complaining about the excessive number of girls with pink bicycles in the neighborhood. There are worse things than girls who like pink.

Comments

Andrée Zaleska is the co-founder of the JP Green House, and a community organizer who works for the Institute of Policy Studies. More information about the JP Green House can be found at jpgreenhouse.org.

jaiagreen Posted 7:36 pm
14 Sep 2009
No internet access except on Saturday morning seems rather harsh. If your oldest was a compulsive bookworm, would you say, "No recreational reading except on Saturday mornings"?As a writer for Grist, you know how much there is to be learned on the Internet. (I was debating politics with lawyers at 13.) If the concern is excessive gaming, why not just limit gaming or limit total screentime to a couple of hours a day? Playing outside is great, but I always recall Isaac Asimov's words about his childhood as a non-athletic, unpopular bookworm. ""But life is glorious when it is happy; days are carefree when they are
happy; the interplay of thought and imagination is far and superior to
that of muscle and sinew."
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1. Andrée Zaleska Posted 4:29 pm
  15 Sep 2009
  I'm convinced our response is not excessive; in fact I think the Saturdays-only policy is quite lenient. The child in question does not use the internet for anything but gaming. He prefers computer-games over all other activities, including real games, sports, and social interaction with others. At age 9 he cannot ride a bike or swim or play any sports at the level of his peers, because he has devoted himself so totally to computer games. There are many children like this, and I think we are looking at a form of addictive behavior that we, as parents, need to take responsiblity for while our children are still minors. Eventually, his choice of activities will be just that--his choice--but right now we have authority and influence and I think its our job to help him enjoy more of the world.
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jaiagreen Posted 7:43 pm
15 Sep 2009
Far be it from me tell other people how to raise their children -- I'm 26 and don't yet have any -- but would your response be the same if his passion was reading or board games or soccer? (Assume that he still couldn't ride a bike or swim and preferred that one particular activity to all others.) Well-roundedness is a good thing for most people, but I think there's a common knee-jerk negative reaction to electronic media, especially among us enviros.
For some devastating critiques of "internet addiction" and similar ideas, see mindhacks.com.
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1. Andrée Zaleska Posted 4:13 am
  16 Sep 2009
  If I saw my child engaged in any activity to the exclusion of all others, it would set off a warning bell. Certainly there have always been kids who read constantly, and they are often disguising shyness or social difficulties. I agree that doesn't bother people as much as the obsessive-gaming, but I think it probably should.I'm in agreement with you that there is nothing wrong with gaming, inherently. You could also say there nothing wrong with alcohol or drugs, inherently, in moderation. It's the pattern of the behavior that warrants scrutiny.
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katmainomad Posted 6:07 pm
16 Sep 2009
I, for one, am with you. I send my kid (age 6) to a waldorf-inspired public school that would rather we kept our kids from any screen time. Most of us parents cave and open up at least non-school nights to some appropriate movies or internet. With an only child, self-entertainment is a magic thing, and luckily my kid finally likes to play by himself with objects he pretendsd are space ships or swords for long hours. I also nab any playmate I can to come help him in this activity. I agree that games, internet or otherwise, are not inherently damaging to most normal adults or near adults. I think they can have adverse effects on the development of a young child. The debate will continue, but screens are inherently different from paper books, and both may need to take a backseat to social and environmental play to raise a healthy child. I was a bookworm, but my parents made me and/or took me outside to play a fair amount, and the combination of the two is wonderful.
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1. Andrée Zaleska Posted 9:01 am
  17 Sep 2009
  We can duck from reality behind a screen or a book, and in so many other ways. Ultimately, its a spiritual choice we make as we confront our addictions (I believe we all have addictions.) But right now we, as parents, are guiding our children's spiritual lives, so we make the rules that we think will help them. In the end, they're own their own.
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Truly Scrumptious Posted 8:58 am
17 Sep 2009
Oh, dear. I have been ignoring this topic in our house for awhile now. Like the author, we faced the Comcast bundle conundrum. We don't watch TV (don't tell my son, but the TV does actually work!), but between the computer games and the Netflix rentals ("has a movie for me come yet?! can I go check the mail?!") the screen time is too much, but frankly, I don't want to have to limit my screen time, and that's why it continues in our house.Is there something wrong with gaming so much? Actually, there may be, although we don't know how much is too much or at what point health problems begin, and of course that will be different for every person. We also are conducting an experiment on our kids, because this is the first generation to grow up with gaming from birth. So we don't know what effects the constant gaming will have on other areas as they mature. But studies already tell us that adults and children who spend too much time gaming have higher risk of obesity, and we already have many, many adults with carpal tunnel and other posture-related complaints. So I'm a little scared for the information that will come when we start to do longitudinal studies on people who grew up gaming for hours on end. Like my son.... :(
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CAcationu2 Posted 12:01 pm
21 Sep 2009
As I was growing up, I was allowed to play videogames, read, play outside, etc, essentially whenever I wanted. However, I didn't actually forsake other activities in favor of another, I really liked them all equally. When I was a little girl, I would play videogames with my mother occaisionally, or with my friends if they came over, but we also were told to go outside and play at times. I think that a good balance of all those kinds of activities can be beneficial for you child. We didn't have much for internet when I was growing up, but it was still regulated, at least for the children. My mom and dad could go on whenever they chose but not the children. Of course, as we got older, we got more priveledges. We were always limited when it came to Television though, which I think was a good move on my parents part. I still rarely watch TV and when I do, I watch those shows I have always loved, such as Star Trek or the History, Discovery, and National Geographic channel.
I am only 21 and I don't have any kids of my own, but I do agree that what my parents did was a good idea. They let me make my own choices but every now and again would overrule me.
There are a ton of children nowadays, my own half-brother included, that are addicted to videogames. I think this is because some parents (including my brother's mother) just want the child to be self-entertaining and videogames are there.
While I think withdrawing all internet save for Saturdays is rather extreme, I imagine you have done other things to try and keep your son off them. If this is what you have to do to make him do other activities, then I hope it works for you. Maybe later on he will seek to do other things on his own and there will be no need for restrictions. Best of luck.
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