We survived! Yes, 48 hours without technology. All switched off and disconnected in order to reconnect.
In actual fact I didn’t find it too hard as my weekend was crazy busy. Had I been sitting at home and not going to 3 different football matches, a lunch, a dinner, the shops and an afternoon of family in my home for Mothers Day I may have coped a little less easily.
Here is some of what disconnecting meant for us as a family:
- I had to use a Melways to look up an address! There was no googling and going straight to google maps
- I could not tweet to the world how fantastic my football team played on Friday night
- Mr 9 got out the lego which he hadn’t done for a long time
- I had to check the weather in the newspaper
- Mr 11 had a slight meltdown on Saturday night. He couldn’t understand why we have technology if we arn’t allowed to use it. He thought it was a ridiculous idea in the first place, not something he had actually even agreed to (there was no choice my friend) and only stopped the whinging when I threatened to film him and put it on my blog for evidence as to why we should all disconnect at times. He soon got over it and went and jumped on the trampoline
- My husband may have struggled not being able to check his dream team scores and checking race results
- I read the whole of the weekend paper from front to back
- I did have to check my Heartfelt page to organise an urgent photography session and could see that I had messages on Facebook and had been tagged in photos. It was really quite hard to ignore them (I did though) and there was a slight sense of missing out on something
- It was nice not to have to keep tabs on time limits and who was on what device or game and for how long etc
- It was especially great not to listen to the “Spongebob Squarepants’ theme song
- All the kids were happy to go and watch each others sport rather than stay home
When the time came to reconnect, surprisingly we all didnt race back to it as fast I thought we would! I actually had to really motivate myself just to turn it all back on, read the emails, answer them, check the Facebook page, finish editing photos etc. Whilst writing this now, the 9 year old has been home over an hour and hasnt picked up any technology but instead asked if he can make some choc chip cookies! Maybe he hasn’t realised he is allowed back on!
I understand that for kids who have only lived in a world of technology , switching off altogether can be seen as difficult…..but maybe something that we can incorporate in our lives more regularly…and still survive.
engineering
baking
jumping
constructing
What do you or would you miss the most without technology?
