We are in the middle of a 21-day fast from screens. Inspired by “Reset Your Child’s Brain,” the book by Dr. Victoria Dunckley, and spurned on by some of the attitudes of our children, my husband and I put a stop to screens in our home for the past 10 days. We are smack in the middle of this screen-free time.
The book will tell you everything you need to do:
- how to prepare for it (one week or a long weekend during which you read most of the book, print out a monthly calendar and mark activities on it, and order books, toys, activities, supplies for offline living),
- how to announce it to your children (don’t get into arguments),
- how to meet their objections (sweetly),
- how to frame it (experiment, not punishment),
- how to actually do it (clean sweep of laptops, tablets, cell phones, old equipment forgotten under the bed, Kindles – everything with a screen must be put away),
- how to inform your children’s friends and other caregivers,
- how to keep your own sanity through the process etc.