Getting Rid of the Monsters!

Last night I was going through some of our mail and was looking at some homeschooling advertisements. We normally can't afford all the interesting homeschool resources that are advertised on the little cards but I like to look at them anyway. I found one card that interested me. It talked about a curriculum that the children teach themselves. They don't have to be "taught" by a teacher. They are their own teacher. I took that card to my husband. I'm glad I did. He said that it sounded interesting. So he checked out the website. http://www.robinsoncurriculum.com/info

On the website it talks about unhealthy distractions. How that kids put in the right environment can't help but learn. They talked about the distraction of television, computers, video games. I knew these were definitely a distraction from personal experience. We used to watch t.v. all the time. Then one day a few years ago, I decided to get rid of our T.V. I started off by covering it with a blanket and putting decorations on top. Then after a month of not watching t.v., we watched a movie and realized how terrible some things we watched really were. We sold that television in a garage sale.

Then we were given another t.v. We never hooked an antenna to it. We didn't want the distraction of television in our home. We did watch a few movies on it and had a playstation my husband had obtained about the same time we got the t.v. Surely that won't be a distraction from learning. We didn't want our kids to be different from other kids. We could control the temptation and let them play it occasionally.

Then we gave our son his first laptop computer. I was a little afraid of giving it to him. I knew how addicted he could be to games. Sure enough. That was all he thought about. One time I tried to teach them a history lesson. He had been wanting to play a game all day and he knew I would let him after class was over. I was not happy when in the middle of the lesson he went into the kitchen to look at the clock. He had been thinking about the computer game the whole time.

This morning my husband was a man with a mission. I didn't realize how much he had been thinking on it. He was going through all of our computer CD's and then he informed me that he was going to take all the games off of all the computers, unless they were truly educational. He was going to replace them with Encyclopedias, Bible Software, Dictionaries, and only educational and beneficial resources were going onto it.

I was expecting that to be like pulling teeth for our son. He loves his computer games. I just didn't know how we were going to do it.

My husband started off by fixing us pancakes for breakfast without any sugar. He gave me a bite and said, "It will take some getting use to." At the breakfast table we talked about addictions and how sugar can be a big one. I'm a prime example of that. I sometimes feel like I have to have something sweet. We put sugar in everything. However if you don't have it for a long time, you don't need it anymore. Sugar becomes too sweet.

We told our children that we wanted to start changing the unhealthy habits in our lifestyle. Not only in the foods we eat, but in the things we put into our minds. We discussed how when you are addicted to t.v. and games, your brain can't think of anything else to do. You feel like you have to have it. However without those distractions, you can get a whole lot more done and learn a lot more as well. Then my husband told them that he was going to take all the computers in our house and remove all the mindless distractions.

Hannah was sitting in my lap and said, "What is he doing?" I explained to her that he was going to get all the bad games off our computers.

She said, "He's going to get rid of the monsters? I hate monsters."

We laughed and told her, "Yes, Daddy is going to take all the bad monsters off our computers."

I'm real proud of my husband and children. They immediately went to work getting rid of those monsters.

(Philippians 4:8)
Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things [are] honest, whatsoever things [are] just, whatsoever things [are] pure, whatsoever things [are] lovely, whatsoever things [are] of good report; if [there be] any virtue, and if [there be] any praise, think on these things.