Home School Heartbeat Radio Program

Mike Farris:
Jeff, last time we talked about your family’s practices concerning movies. How do you handle the consumption of other media in your home: music, video games, blogs, news, and so on?

Jeff Myers:
The scholarship, Mike, on this issue is exactly what your common sense is telling you: the more unplugged your kids are, the healthier they will be. But you can’t just unplug from bad things, you have to plug into good things. So, we have no computers, television, or video games in bedrooms. We have one computer in our home for everybody to use, and it’s located in a small room, just off the kitchen. Every kid gets a half-hour a week to play video games.

But the whole issue came to a head with our family a couple years ago, when my kids wanted a Wii for Christmas. I told them, we’re not going to get a Wii, but anything that you want to play with outside—that I can afford—I’ll get you. So we have a two-story playhouse, a fire pit, a 124-foot zip line, a trampoline, a motorbike, five kayaks, an archery range, enough air soft guns to outfit a small army, and who knows what else. But we didn’t actually spend a fortune on it. We built most of it ourselves, and we got a lot on sale.

But we had to make a conscious decision to use what money we had to buy time—time together, and time outside. And it’s made an amazing difference in our home.

Mike:
Jeff, that’s a really, really positive perspective. I appreciate you sharing it. I’m Mike Farris.