Away from the Screen tip #3 - Gratefulness Journal

How to help children re-direct their energy to their Real Life

It is easy for children to get sucked into a screen. I have seen it with my nephews. It was my birthday not long ago and we had a video call. After singing Happy Birthday and playing a tune on their musical instrument, they were captivated by all the funny screen changes available on the app. The conversation stopped and it was all about the fun of transforming our faces and hair. Those applications have now even managed to add small video games within the video chat.

Yes it was fun to see ourselves with big eyes and funky hairdos. After 10 minutes of this though, it felt over the top and I decided to say goodbye. My sister had prepared a board game that was ready to be played and also a lot of fun.

My hope is that we can still engage children in daily family games that involve their own imagination and their own thinking to interact and grow.

We have the competition of all these app developers and we need to be developing our own ways for them to have children embrace their real life.

This simple exercise presented by Terri Lucero will be one example of something you can do to bring your children into the present moment.