Turning Dependence Into Independence

Our Holidays were consumed with family in town, and it has left me quite exhausted; I have had very little Will to blog in the last few days. My eyes are quite tired, so hopefully this post will make sense.

Over the course of this week, Ken and I decided that we needed to have the kids withdraw from the many electronic screens in our house: Computer, TV shows, Monkey Ball. The time in front of each of these items per week day was not excessive (each usually limited to an hour or less), however, when added up...it was becoming way too much screen time. The kids had recently seemed to forget how to play without a virtual world in front of them.

So starting this week, the children were given a choice. They could only have one hour of electronic screen time a day, however they did get to pick what they would do in that hour. In just a few days, I am beginning to see their dependence wane. They still look forward to that hour as the biggest highlight of the day, but at least we have a better balance on it.

This has also caused me to rearrange my school schedule with the children, as I myself had a dependence on the computer screen to entertain and educate one child with Jumpstart CDs, while I worked one on one with the other child on school. On an entirely different tangent, my lovely children have been waking up at 6:00 in the morning, and without a morning TV show(s) before breakfast, they now are dealing with another rule of staying in their room until 7:00am. This is all going somewhere...

The children don't have many toys in their room so I promised them yesterday evening that I would supply them each with a small basket of toys to entertain them during that morning hour. On a whim, I told Grace that I would also give her math and copywork on a clipboard, and if she wished to knock it out early, this would allow for more special time in the afternoon together. I honestly thought she might start it, but would soon be distracted by whatever Jack started playing with.

This morning she came to me with the school work completely finished! What a small blessing to our morning that finished work was. Knocking out the worksheet material, then allowed me to better juggle our Ambleside reading, and Jack's work. Jack was also strangely independent. I had given him copywork and some math to work on while I read to Grace (3 sheets), however, he independently decided to do both the front and back of all three pages (6 sheets total). I made sure to reward them both for an excellent school day with that extra special time in the afternoon. We played a butterfly identification board game (by their request) that we hadn't played since our butterfly study in the summer, and I have to say, I really enjoyed it. With fingers crossed, I am hoping that this new effort to knock out school work while Mom is still snoozing or showering continues!

I think Grace is enjoying a feeling of independence too. I had already put together Grace's clipboard for tomorrow, but left it on the kitchen table. Without telling me, she set to work on the math sheet leaving only 4 problems left for tomorrow.