A couple of weeks ago Jared needed to go to the bank. Where one of us goes usually all of us go (my husband doesn’t drive) so we all piled in and headed out. We knew it was going to take awhile so I chose to stay in the car with the kids rather than becoming a public display (inadvertently promoting birth control). Jack and Grace had their headphones on watching a movie on the DVD player and Luke was asleep so my initial thought was “nice, I can get on my phone and get through some emails.”
As I was scanning through my mail I came across a blog post that caught my attention. Basically it was about how we have become so addicted to our phones/technology that we wind up only half paying attention to our children (and anyone else around us for that matter). When responding to someone’s question do you ever draw out the word “uuuuuuhhhmm” while your brain scrambles to fill your mouth with the right words as you simultaneously read ‘so-and-so’s’ latest status update? Is any spare moment of time a trigger for your hand to pick up your phone and check your texts or Twitter or…whatever (stoplights anyone?)
I felt like I had just been caught in the act. I was so guilty that I wanted to look around as I was sure someone was watching me neglect my kids for 10 minutes of time on my phone!
Like a ton of bricks it hit me – I know that I habitually waste precious time with my kids. I’m not saying all technology is bad, after all it’s what allows me to work from home so I can be with my kids. But if I’m with them and not present that’s almost worse than not being there at all.
So I went to Pinterest on my phone (bare with me here, I see the irony) and pulled up this tutorial. It is the cutest way to teach your kids how to draw the most fun little characters. I unbuckled the kids and Grace climbed up into the front with me where we proceeded to draw a panda together on her dry erase board that we keep in the car.
Mine is on the right of course.
Then she proceeded to help me with the grocery list. Can you tell what her favorite snack is these days?
Shortly after this Luke woke up, Grace was attempting to escape out the sunroof and Jack was climbing all over me. I had freed the wild animals from their cages to say the least. But we played. And we laughed. And I don’t remember one other thing I read on my phone that day (besides the blog post of course) but I’ll always remember drawing that little panda with Grace.