The Tech-Wise Family by Andy Crouch

Author:Andy Crouch [Crouch, Andy]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Parenting—Religious aspects—Christianity, Technology—Religious aspects—Christianity, Families—Religious aspects—Christianity, REL012030, FAM034000, FAM039000
ISBN: 9781493406555
Publisher: Baker Publishing Group
Published: 2017-02-06T05:00:00+00:00

Sweet Dreams, Little Smartphone

So, we need a simple discipline: our devices should “go to bed” before we do. And to add a nudge to that discipline, it’s by far the best if their “bedroom” is as far from ours as possible. It may be that one adult, at least, needs a phone nearby at night in case of emergency, but most children and teenagers (and, um, dads) lack the self-discipline to turn their smartphones to “Do Not Disturb” and put them facedown on the bedside table for a solid eight or nine hours.

So find a central place in the home, far from the bedrooms, and park the screens there before bedtime. (All this applies, a thousand times over, to the glowing overstimulation of television—surely the single least helpful thing, short of a jackhammer, you could ever put in a place where someone is trying to fall asleep. In fact, most television programming, designed to catch and keep the attention of a distracted public, is the visual equivalent of a jackhammer.) Buy a cheap alarm clock so you don’t have to rely on a smartphone to wake you up. Sleep specialists widely recommend that, once night comes, the bedroom should be reserved for just one thing: sleep (and, for the parents, romance). Make it so.

In the interval between putting the devices to bed and laying your own head on the pillow, spend a few minutes in the darkening quiet talking, praying, or reading by the calming reflected light from a page.

And then, in the morning, rather than rolling over to check for whatever flotsam and jetsam arrived in the night, get up and do something—anything—before plugging in. Stretch. Shower. Open the front door for a moment and breathe the morning’s air, humid or frigid as it may be. Make coffee or tea and wait for the brew to finish. There is something for you to discover in these moments just after waking that you will never know if you rush past it—an almost-forgotten dream, a secret fear, a spark of something creative. You’ll have the rest of the day tethered to the impatient wider world; let that wait a moment. Give your devices one more minute in their “beds.” Practice the grateful breath of someone who slept and awakened, given the gift of one more day.

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