Hello and welcome back to the Simplicity Diaries with me, Kim John Payne. Always so glad you could carve out this little 10 or 15 minutes to join me. Today, a big theme actually, and I'll try and nutshell it, is to come from, it's about screens and screen use, but don't worry it's going to be okay.
And it's talking about it from being careful with screens and having a low or no screen home, but coming at that not from a deficit that we don't have screens, not from a deficit, but from an abundance of what we do have in our home. Now let me unpack this a little bit and how you can set this up if this strikes a chord with you. You'll know through some of you from my writing and through these podcasts that I make this statement, I'm not necessarily anti-screen for kids, I'm just passionately pro-connection, passionately pro-connection.
And I divide those connections up somewhat into four concentric circles. The one connection, like a big circle, the largest circle, is connection to nature, is connection to the natural world. And then the next circle in from that is a connection to friends and connection to play and being with friends and having great times.
And the next circle in, circle within a circle, the third circle in, is connection to family and time with family. And the fourth circle in is right at the core, and that's connection to one's self, to my values, to who I think I am, those values that we hope every child will have. True, true north, as opposed to the magnetic north of toxic pop culture and having to be someone who you're not.
We can turn this way, these four circles into abundance rather than talk about deficit in this way. You can put up on the wall at home, this is one way to do it, on the wall at home, four big circles, get a big piece of paper, four big circles, one inside the other, inside the other, inside the other. And then think up together with your child or your tween or teen, or you can just solo this and just write it down yourself, but think up collaboratively or individually, all the things that you have time to do in terms of connection to nature.
And just list the trips that you've done that have been amazing places, the times you've been involved in nature, in each week when you get involved in that, or each holiday, or every day if you're lucky to live in a place where you're surrounded by the natural world, but list them. And you can even enrich that further by telling stories about that and reminiscing about it, and then write it down, write it down in that connection to nature. And then the next circle is connection to friends, and write down all the fun we have with friends and cousins, and all the friendship time that we have, real friendship, not friending online, and not watching nature videos on television, on the computer, but real nature, real friendships.
And list some of our dear friends, and write their names down if you like, and what you did, and how some are really connected to, you know, things that you do, that you go skating together, or you play dollies together, or that you, whatever it is, depending on the age of the child, but they're very forthcoming with those friendships and the things that are funner to do, the funnerest. And then the next circle in is all the fun we have as a family, all the games we play, the magnet tiles that we build together, the legos that we do, the baking that we do, the outings we go on. It's rich pickings, right? All the things we do together that are fun, the stories that we tell, the places we go, oh my goodness, so much abundance.
And then right to the center, to the fourth and center circle, the core, is that of the time we get for ourselves, just to be able to explore, to have projects, to be able to listen to music, to be able to practice basketball out in the driveway, but just time for ourselves, where it's just us, and we're not plugged in, we're not connected to the screen. It's just time for us, and how beautiful that is. Coming from that abundance picture is a real flip of the script, because kids are always thinking if we curate their screen use and limit their screen use, or have no screens, even better still, that they're missing out, right? That they're missing out.
But in this way, you show them not just they're missing out on this piece of glass and metal in their hand, but all the things that they are doing, and they really do have time with friends, and they do have time in nature. We have loads of fun as a family. We get time on our own just to paint, to draw, to write, to play music, whatever it is.
Because the average American 12-year-old is exposed to nine and a quarter hours of screens per day. Per day. And that doesn't include multiple screens, like watching the computer, having the TV on, and having your phone.
That's just an hour figure. And, you know, again, not being anti-screen as such, although there's lots of reasons one could be anti-screen, but another way to look at it is pro-connection, because if you're spending one, two, three, four hours, let alone nine hours, but if you're spending those hours on a screen, they're hours where we're not having fun in real life. Now you can say that to a kid, but even better still, why not list it? Why not make a wall hanging of it? Why not do those circles nicely in our best writing? Write on all the fun that we have in those four aspects of connection, and have it in a prominent place.
And so when a child does complain about, why don't I get to play? I want to play Minecraft like the other kids, and I want to do Fortnite, and I want to, you know, have my own Instagram, whatever it is. And rather than saying no, no, no, we can say, sweetheart, I know that is hard, because the other kids have that. But what we have is this.
And you can point right to it without being sanctimonious. You can just point right to it and point out all the things that you do achieve in connection to nature, in connection to real friends, not friending, but real friends who will be there for you when you need them. Real connection to your brothers and sisters or parents or guardians, real connections to family, and then time to be on your own so that you don't confuse being alone, which is wonderful, with being lonely, because you're not plugged in.
So this way of working with life's connected abundance, I think we need to emphasize this more and more, to give our children the picture of what we do have, and not just what we don't. Because what we don't have, when we delay an iPhone until about 16, even then, I think a Gab phone, like a fancy flip phone, talk and text only is all I ever gave, all we ever gave our kids. But rather than focusing on what we don't, we focus on what we do.
And what a wonderful way, got to be careful to be to not be preachy about it. But this is something we can say, hand on heart, or really authentically to our kids, that this is what we do have. All right, I sure hope that was helpful.
I really hope that was helpful. Okay, bye bye for now.
