Video Games Are Not the Issue

Did your kids get a video game system for the holidays? Did they spend hours and hours playing those new systems?

The topic of video games is a hottie! One the one side, we have the “limit screen time” crew, with all the various reasons. On the other we have “don’t set limits”.

This is the wrong discussion to be having. Video game success doesn’t depend on whether we set time limits or not.

This is where I stand on the video game thing – everything in moderation. (Even moderation.) I love video games, my husband does too and the kids do. We love a lot of other things too. Our position on the video game issue doesn’t even place us on the ’set limits-don’t set limits’ measuring stick.

Because, most of the video game issues aren’t even about video games.

If we didn’t do anything else, the kids would play video games all day. If we didn’t do anything else, they’d run around the house all day. If we didn’t do anything else, they’d play in the back yard all day in the mud. There are a lot of things they’d do all day if we did nothing else. Here’s the solution: we do so many different kinds of things, it doesn’t matter if there is something that they would do all day if we did nothing else, because we are too busy to have time to spend all day doing one thing. That’s not the reason we do lots of things, but it’s a side effect.

Kids arguing over video games is one of reasons parents get frustrated with them. But arguing about video games isn’t any different than arguing over board games, or sports, or sharing paints. If the kids are at a point where they can’t deal, it’s time to change gears for a bit, and come back to it later. Kind of like a mom who finds herself screaming at her kids needs some time out with girlfriends or some centered time dealing with her baggage (hey, so maybe I’m speaking from experience here What she doesn’t need is a self-imposed limit to 1hr a day with her kids or her kids to be taken away so she won’t yell at them.

Video games or no video games, it doesn’t matter to me. But it doesn’t make sense to blame the box, when people are arguing and yelling at each other. It’s not the game’s fault. There’s something else going on.

I want to share a story about my personal experience with video games, as a player.

My husband and I used to play a lot of video games together. When the babies were little, I’d nurse them while running my character around in Everquest, making money so that my husband could go on raids and buy “l33t” gear. It was this family thing we did together.

There was a turning point, where I realized that the kids were getting old enough that they couldn’t join us (because we didn’t have enough computers), and they weren’t happy just sitting on our laps while we played anymore. So I started playing board games with them during that time instead, and my husband still played EQ. A lot. What used to be a very social game for us, turned into an isolated one from my perspective.

But it was a hard call, because my husband’s friends were all in the game. Before, he could be with his family and his friends at the same time. And, he really enjoyed playing. (And, to be honest, it was hard for me too. I wanted to play, and had to make daily decisions on whether or not I was going to.)

Over time, we’ve made many adjustments so that my husband can play with his friends, but he still spends time with us playing board games, or other video games that we can all play together. Some games we’ve played were single-player games, where we rooted each other on, and took turns. Other games, we’d all play at once (can you say Rock Band? OMG).

It’s not the video games that was the issue. It was US, trying to deal with our own personal needs to 1) spend time with family, 2) spend time alone and 3) spend time with friends. And get it all worked out. That was our issue – I could have easily blamed EQ for all of our problems – it’s addictive or it never ends or it takes my hubby from our family. But because I had played for a long time myself before, I could understand that this issue wasn’t so black and white. It was not about the game. It was about figuring out why we play, balancing our time and understanding everyone’s needs.

Today, I don’t play video games very often anymore. I spend a lot of time writing and reading instead. This takes a lot of concentration and often it has to be done in isolation. I get grumpy when people interrupt me when I’m concentrating. I think about my writing a lot when I’m not writing. I get frustrated when I can’t say something the way I want to. These are all very similar feelings to what I hear about kids playing video games. But for me, it’s writing. Should I stop writing? Limit myself to a certain amount of time? Or should I just let myself write as long as I need to the exclusion of everything else? There’s a balance to be had. I write as much as I can squeeze in. When I’m frustrated, I take a break.

When I see my kids frustrated at video games, or legos or board games, I think of that. I think of how I feel when I’m writing. And try to help them find solutions where they can still do the things they love, and have tools to deal with the frustration that comes along with being passionate about something.

Stumble It!

Homeschooling and Writing

Are you a writer? Would you like to hang out with other homeschool parents who are writers too?

Home Educator Writer’s Group is where we come together and support each others’ writing lives.

Whether you write nonfiction, fiction, blogs, articles, in your journal or grocery lists, you’re welcome to join us.

Hope to see you there.

Just Enough School, Just Enough Life

I found a sister blog today, HavingEnough. She’s a mom and a writer. She’s not a homeschooler (although she’s considering it), she brings up universal ideas of having and doing “enough”. I was happily surprised by how similar our messages are, just in different context.

Here are some gems:

“More is essentially good. Except when it’s already enough.”

and in another post she says…

“I know I can’t avoid it all, but I can at least try to find educational settings where there is an awareness of these issues and a true desire to lessen their impact. What I can do: not overschedule her (I’m already boycotting all the baby classes!), not give into the consumer crazies, be aware, not push her to “achieve,” but rather show a love of learning for its own sake in our home. Still, it takes a village and all that.”

Have You Always Wanted to Write a Book?

Today is the first day of NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month). It’s the month to hunker down with 100,000 other people and just write the damn thing.

If you’re a homeschooler, join us at the homeschoolNano yahoo group. If you’re not a homeschooler, join us at the writercircle yahoo group.

Happy NaNoing!

National Novel Writing Month for Homeschoolers

Hey all you writers – kids and parents – are you doing NaNo this year?

If so, join our yahoo group, and let’s motivate each other to finish our books.

Hope to see you there!

The Importance of Not Meeting a Goal

I am a firm believer in goal setting.

But I am not a firm believer that the goals we set are necessarily where we need to end up.

Eight months ago, I joined an online Query Challenge. This was a challenge through a writing blog to see who could match a goal of sending out 10 writing queries a month. It was the perfect goal for me to kickstart a more serious attitude towards my writing career.

At the end of each month, one of the writers would be chosen at random to receive a writin-related prize. And at the end of the year, the person with the most queries sent would get some big prize.

I love that kind of incentive! There are no losers.

So I set to work and for several months worked on sending out my queries, knowing that I would have to post my numbers for all to see every four weeks. I didn’t get to 10, but I certainly sent out more than I would have. Some queries I sent just to say I sent something, even though I knew it wouldn’t get a response.

Then, one day, one of my queries landed me a book deal.

Holy crappola.

So I quit the query challenge.

If the most important thing in goal making is meeting the goals, then I failed.

I don’t believe the most important thing in making goals is meeting them. It’s finding ourselves. Making the goal of writing a certain number of queries a month was the thing that got me moving forward. Then I found the path that moved me away from that goal towards something else entirely.

Making goals is an important tool in getting us to move forward. But it isn’t a failure if we don’t meet our goals. If we don’t meet our goals, it means one of three things:

1) We found another goal that led us down the path towards ourselves. (Sometimes this isn’t obvious like in the case of making a conscious decision to quit.)

2) We get distracted and hover for a while until remember our goals, which motivates us to move forward again.

3) The goals we made for ourselves are moving us forward, but in a direction that we aren’t supposed to be going. We instinctually know that it’s the wrong kind of goal, moving us away from ourselves, and that’s why we are so resistant to trying to meet them. (And why we are so attached to the idea that we have to meet them or we fail.)

Making goals increases enthusiasm. It gives us drive to do something new. It can even change our lives. They can also make us feel bad about ourselves instead of helping us recognize who we are.

If you don’t meet a goal, don’t blame yourself for being lazy, or unmotivated. If the kids can’t meet a goal, or don’t want to, it’s not a sign that they are lazy either. Instead, ask yourself if there is a better goal. Or if making goals is an excuse to run away from the real you.

Some tips on making goals:

1) Make big goals, little goals, specific goals and general goals. Make all kind of goals. But keep in mind that the more specific and small the goal, the more likely it will actually be attained. The more general and large, the more likely it will lead you somewhere you least expect.

2) Make goals that match who you are. Which kinds of goals have you had no problem meeting in the past? Which kinds of goals always seem to be hard to keep?

3) Don’t try to make too drastic of changes or demand something of yourself that is unreasonable or requires a complete life overhaul. Think baby steps.

4) Keep your list short. Focus on one or two specific goals, and one or two general goals. If you find yourself forgetting the goals you’re supposed to be targetting, you probably have too many goals.

5) The only time is now. If you struggle with your goals, don’t beat yourself up for what you didn’t do this week, or this month. You probably needed to hover for a bit. Focus on what you can do now to move forward, then do it. Thinking about past inactivity increases our chances that we’ll stay inactive.

6) Most importantly – do what works. Use goal setting strategies that work for you and leave you and your kids feeling good about yourselves.

What kinds of goal setting experiences have worked for you? Have you ever had the experience of setting a goal, then because of that goal, being led in a different direction that was even better than your original plan?

Reading “Trash”

When I was a kid, I read voraciously. I have always been a reader. But, the things I would read…many parents would classify under the category of “trash”. Romance, horror…well, that about covers it. Judy Blume was probably the closest I came to reading quality books.

During college, when I decided on French as one of my majors, and then decided to take that to the graduate level, I got sidetracked and read book after book of “good” literature. Classics, important stuff. You know, the books that marked significant changes in our world’s approach to storytelling and expository essaying.

Then, school was over. And as hard as I tried to hold myself up to the expectations I had created in grad school. I was “above” all the fluff I used to read. Come on, I had managed to slog through Proust and Les Miserables – more than once even. I had read epic poems in old French (and even understood them, sort of). I had in-depth discussions about how the philosophy of Sartre still has influence on us today in our existential world.

I couldn’t possibly let myself be sucked into the temptation of formulaic romance novels or Steven King’s gratuitous human torture.

Well, I suppose, we can never really escape our true nature. What we want to be, and who we are, sometimes don’t come together easily. And all those books that I accumulated in college, slowly migrated to boxes in the garage. Without the pressure cooker of a competitive grad program, I just couldn’t find the motivation to revisit the 19th century bourgeois life. Instead, I gravitated towards sci-fi, fantasy and pop fiction.

Some of my friends in college drank classic French literature like a fine wine, or guzzled it like beer. Neil Stephenson, that was my beer. The Golden Compass showed me the way. I bled reading Anne Rice. French lit – it made me feel smarter, and it gives me something to talk about when I’m hob-nobbing with important people in important places. But the books that talk to me, are the ones who speak my own language – not the language of “good lit”.

I’ve been reading a lot of chick lit recently. I got kind of tired of the formulaic romance novels. A long time ago actually. I realized I was completely done with the romance genre when I finished reading The Time Traveler’s Wife. That is a love story like no other I had read. I wanted something more complex and uncertain, but which still spoke to me on a level that felt like a friend or neighbor.

Chick lit fills that gap – providing the love stories I hanker to read, yet doesn’t bog me down with flowery language or three-page long descriptions of the love interest’s biceps. In fact, chick lit speaks my language so clearly that I feel like I’m reading a letter from one of my friends, laughing and crying as if the stories were my own.

There is obviously something I’m getting out of reading these books. I read other things too, including a ton of non-fiction. But reading chick lit is like taking a nap. It revitalizes my brain, like a cranial spa. I’m open to anything, but given a choice, right now, I’d choose chick lit.

So, I think about how I read, and what I read, and wonder – did my early years of reading trash mess me up? Did it make me a “bad” reader? Somehow, after years of pretending to read the books I was assigned in school, and writing book reports based on cliff notes and reading the first paragraph of each chapter, I managed to go off to college and become a literature major. I also managed to develop into a relatively competent writer, even though all I wanted to write when I was a kid was sloppy love poems and stories about back-stabbing, boyfriend-stealing friends.

I see my kids now, reading Sponge Bob, Powerpuff girls, Star Wars and Charlie Brown, and think how reading, of any kind, from any source, is good. It’s all good. We are driven to read the things that have meaning for us. And being made to read things we don’t like won’t make us like them. Even if we think that we’re supposed to like them, and we try to like them, if it’s not speaking to us, and doesn’t jive with our true nature, we can’t force ourselves to like it.

Now, can we benefit from reading the classics and knowing who all the authors are and what they wrote about? Sure! Nothing wrong with that at all (especially when playing literature Trivia Pursuit or impressing a boyfriend’s parents). But do we need these things to get along? To be “readers”? To find the written word fascinating and wonderful? I don’t think so.

Some of the stuff that we read now as “classics” were considered “trash” in their own time. Who knows, maybe Bridget Jones’ Diary and Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants will one day be listed in the classics, and considered one of the first forrays into a genre that ends up being lauded in the next 50 years as superb cultural commentary? And, does it really matter anyway? There are plenty of happy, successful Americans who don’t read stories for pleasure. And don’t know the classics.

Although, I have to say, for all the people who aren’t reading chick lit, you’re missing out. A good intro to chick lit, IMHO, is Big Love. My favorite so far.

It may be the most “fluff” genre out there after romance, but it’s smarter than most people think, and brings in a whole new kind of story telling that only a 21st century woman can “get”. So for that, it rocks.

Oh, and I can read one book in just a few hours. As a mom, and writer, and 15 other things I’m doing, quick reads are where it’s at.

So, what about you? Do you read “trash”? Do your kids?

For All You Writers Out There

Interestingly enough, many people who are bloggers (and readers of blogs), also happen to be writers.

Huh.

Anyway, I did a crazy thing and accepted this challenge. Wanna join us?

Five Things – Language

Think about this:

In your child’s life, what are five ways that they are learning about the English language?

Answer number one is “books”. That encompasses every single book they ever are exposed to, including text books, English exercises, literature, grammar workbooks, everything.  Books are only one way to learn about language.

What are four other ways that your child learns about the English language; any and all aspects of it?

Homeschooling Spelling

Yesterday, I finished up our family holiday letter. After about ten runs through the printer, I fixed many typos, adjusted pictures, and made it “perfect”. Just before I sent it off to print 30 copies, I asked my 8 year old to look it over and tell me if there were any spelling errors.

He found two. Two errors that I hadn’t noticed.

This is from a child who has never had a spelling lesson in his life, has never memorized a spelling list and has never been asked to write anything just for the sake of writing.

So, he said to me, “Mom, even really good writers can make spelling errors.”

I chuckled, told him, “Yes, you’re right.”

Then he added, “Even you.” (This made me a happy mommy on so many levels!)

No judgement. Just a statement of fact. Just an observation. Then without any fuss or needless contemplation, he went back to putting together his K’nex roller coaster.

My five year old demanded to see my errors. She made no comment, but I know her. This conversation sunk in.

Today, she’s helping me print out the “perfect” copies, and is getting ready to help me decorate the holiday cards.

Life without school, well, it just rocks.