As part of the 365 Day Nature Play Challenge we dare each other to go a whole day with no electronic entertainment… This is what happened.
213 – NO ELECTRONICS! day
Saturday 31 May. Cloudy. 18°C
It was B’s idea. “I think we should have a whole day with no electronics and you won’t be able to look at your phone AT ALL”.
It takes me a while to get my head round this.
Me: “But if we did no electronics you wouldn’t be able to play on your tablet?”
B: “I know”
Me: “Or watch TV?”
B: “Well duh!”
She’d really thought this one out. It takes several more days for me to get on board though.
Me: “I can’t turn my phone off totally. What if your grandma needs something? And I have to do our daily post.”
B: “NO! You have to turn it off completely”.
It turns out this is actually quite possible. Grandma can call on an old fashioned thing called a ‘home phone’. It’s not been used for a while but she’s happy with it. Though I turn off the wi-fi and, it turns out, this now turns off the phone too which it takes a while for us to realise!
That just leaves the posting and it occurs to me, eventually, that a nature play challenge isn’t worth the internet it’s written on if it can’t be turned off for the day for a cause like this. Finally I’m ready.
Me: “Ok. So we’re doing it on Saturday. Phone and tablet will be hidden away and turned off. Wi-fi and TV turned off at the wall. No radio.”
B: “Great!”
I’m slightly wondering which of us is going to wobble first but we don’t. Saturday morning we wake up and don’t put the tv on. Instead we chat, play games and cook breakfast together. The kitten gets played with more than she has all holidays. By lunchtime we’ve also gone through most of B’s play chest and found some old favourites we haven’t seen for ages. She’s having a great time. I’m having a bit of trouble finding time to do things I want, which is making me worry that I use electronics for the wrong reason. And I REALLY miss the radio. We do allow ourselves the old CD player but it’s odd listening to it and we only do a few songs before giving up. We sing instead, which is fun and find B’s old music instruments collection from nursery.
I think we made a mistake not planning an activity at the same time. It’s mid afternoon by the time we get out but then we don’t stop. B races round the town and down to the beach, wandering back via all her favourite stops. We’re toying with what to do in the evening.
B: “Can I turn the TV on for a little bit?”
Me: “NO!”
I knew she’d crack eventually but I’m surprised how long it took her to miss it.
In the end we go for a fire in the garden. B starts the fire, she’s good at this now. We only have one firelighter so have to make sure it starts. We experiment moving the kindling around and have a few moments when it looks doomed. We’re proud when we succeed and get glowing red charcoal and warmth. Then we head back inside, read some books and go to bed early.
It’s a lovely laid back sort of day. We’re both calm and not stressed and I really enjoy not having the anxious feeling that I need to ‘check in’ with things. We have a lot of time to talk and play and it feels really healthy. We’re also both totally knackered the next day. I realise that the one thing I missed electronics for was for winding down sort of entertainment. We haven’t stopped. I’m also puzzled because we’re pretty electronics free when we go camping in the summer holidays and I’ve found that relaxing. It takes a bit of reflection to realise how much environment affects you when you’re not tuned into something else.
We’ll definitely do it again. Next time I’ll plan more and have some sort of structure to the day… but also leave time for the hanging around ‘not doing anything very much’ which made up most of it. I think it was good for us.
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