to impose a week long ban on electrical items

[bellastella]

...to see if it improves our levels of communication and lets us have a different type of 'fun' as a family?

We are me, my DP and DC aged 12 and 3. I think we all over use our entertainment equipment to the detriment of communicating with each other and so I am thinking of having a week off of it all.

So you know what I'm suggesting we give up, we have;
TV, one in the living room
PC, ditto, used by DP for WOW and other PC games
Laptops x3, one is mine, other 2 belong to DC1
X-box, attached to TV
Hand held games consoles belonging to DC1
Mobiles, me and DP, often looking at Facebook

I'm thinking to keep the mobiles but put them away when children are awake and even hopefully after they've gone to bed. Keep any music players. If any homework needs internet research, then a device would be allowed.

Stuff we could do instead: talk, read, listen to music, play board games, do craft. Any more ideas?

The little one will really miss the TV as he does watch it a lot. The big one will miss everything as he has the most to lose. DP will be fairly amenable but won't like the Facebook ban. I'll struggle the least in missing stuff but will have the extra pressure of providing alternative entertainment!

What do you think? Am I mad? Is it a good idea? Has anyone else done it? I just miss my family a bit you see...

just took xbox lead from 14yr old son but now sulking in his room so wont see him tonight anyway

i think it is a great idea, have you broached it with DH and teh 12 year old? i think it might go down better if you allow a bit of compromise, rather than a total ban. so maybe teh 12 year old can have the xbox for half an hour in teh evening rather than none at all for teh whole week.

i meant, everyone gets a compromise, not just the 12 year old, you and DH as well.

Sounds like a great idea, so long as everyone in the family agrees on the experiment. I bet it will be a real eye-opener. Have fun!!!

Great idea but I think I would tend to go for alternate nights otherwise "family time" might be viewed in a negative way due to resentment.

Also, I find it quite difficult to monitor DS2 as most of his homework is set online and researched on the internet. I have to trust him not to play games as there is only so many excuses I can find to do a random visit to his room

Thankyou for your comments

I do think my approach is a bit 'all or nothing' you're right. The reason I thought it ought to be this way is because a 'cold turkey' approach has worked better in the past than an 'every other' type approach. Also, letting there be some X-box use would mean the TV would need to be plugged back in and then DC1 would play, go to bed and leave me with a functioning object of my desire!

I have broached the idea with DP and DC1 in the past, may well do so again this week. Both DP and DC1 have a Tae Kwon Do exam to study for this week so maybe now wold be a good time to get rid of some of the distractions?

There's a book about this. A US mum took away all screens from her 3 teen children for 6 months and wrote about the results (which were good, in the main). Sorry, no links, but it has been on the radio as book extract on R4.

Wii is for the wii-kend here (see what I did there ) for all of us. Ds1 is only allowed to use his ds at weekends/in holidays (but for me it's fair game during school hours!). We don't have tv on after school much anyway, so your proposition is mostly what we do anyway. I guess I could do with stepping away from the computer during the day. Maybe I'll try that, so thanks for the prompt.

Evenings I'm pretty well on my own as dh works most nights, so tv and the laptop are my only company.

Rather than banning anything, which is a very negative thing to do, why don't you encourage a family night, once a week, which is very positive!

We all know people repond much better to positive, rather than negative. This approach also means it won't be too unfair on the little one, as he'll be in the houe most of the day, whereas everyone else is at school/work, I assume?

Yes you are mad, and completely out of touch with a whole generation . They dont do old school 'communication' and wont appreciate your craft and bored game nights.

You would be much better off getting involved with the console playing etc. and becoming a cool mum.