One of the things we’ve instituted since I’ve quit is tighter control over the kids’ screen-based leisure activities. We were sort of half-heartedly doing this over the last year, kind of taking it day by day, but now we have Rules (with a capital R no less). Geeky Boy’s obsession was the computer, spending hours playing games, watching YouTube, etc., while Geeky Girl plopped herself in front of the tv for far too long. So now they each get an hour a day during the week and 2 hours/day on the weekends. This has led to their having to get creative about entertaining themselves. They’ve played shuffleboard, read books, come up with some kind of ball game that involves stairs and the cat, created videos, and occasionally driven us a little crazy.

Geeky Boy has actually expanded what he’s doing online, so in addition to just playing RuneScape and finding cool YouTube videos, he’s been working on an Inform project, and he started a new blog. Now that all that activity must take place within the span of an hour, he finds himself faced with decisions about how to spend that time. All good I think.

Believe it or not, Geeky Girl is less attracted to reading now than Geeky Boy, but she’s pulled out the last Harry Potter book again in addition to revisiting her Flip video camera. I’m hoping the increased non-tv time will lead to even more reading.

And they also both have chores–kitchen duty and room cleaning–that they must attend to every day as well.

It’s been an adjustment for them, but they’re not really complaining about it much. Every once in a while, we’ll get a “just five more minutes” or “can’t I have a 1/2 hour more today” but for the most part, they’re adjusting just fine.