Our Summer Without Video Games

Today marks the end of three months at our household without video games. I'm pretty sad it's over, to tell you the truth! It really was a wonderful summer. We're a fairly low-electronics household already -the kids don't have tablets or phones- but they do each get a half hour of video game time every day after schoolwork and chores are done. It doesn't seem like a lot, but three kids plus a husband on his days off work were adding up to a lot of time of the family just sitting and either gaming or watching other people game. I was concerned that the kids were losing a lot of precious childhood hours glued to the couch. Also, we live in a really small house, and there is literally nowhere to get away from the constant noise of the video games. Between the mom guilt and the noise, I was going a little bananas.

So at the end of June, we packed up the Switch and put it in a closet. I really appreciate Adam going along with the challenge because I'm pretty sure this is something he 100% did just to indulge me. He was a total champ. The kids were also pretty chill about it, all things considered; they never once asked to play video games the entire summer. I was very clear that this wasn't a punishment of any kind, and this was an opportunity for everyone to practice getting their dopamine from actual living.

So what did our summer look like? For starters, the kids were outside all the time. And I mean, ALL THE TIME. They formed a pack with several neighborhood kids and spent many hours bouncing from yard to yard. Cici and her girlfriends did a lot of makeovers. Allen led a bunch of Nerf battles. Oscar went on a run every day to keep up his fitness from track season (he is kind of a neighborhood celebrity now, haha. I get asked a lot by total strangers, "Is your boy the one who runs?") They all spent many, many hours snuggling the chickens and practicing 4-H showmanship.

Bathing Alexandria for fair. She is in favor of the video games.

We also played a lot of board games. I estimate we played a board or card game on at least 2/3 of the days! That's over sixty times we sat down together! I dusted off Ticket to Ride, and we played the heck out of that game; Splendor and Big Boggle were also popular. We had the opportunity to visit my parents in our old town several times this summer, and we made sure to play many board games with my mom, who loves games and rarely gets the opportunity to play. She actually ended up buying her own set of Splendor! One less game for us to haul down, haha!

One funny side story happened on a road trip we took to the East Coast in July. I told the kids they were in charge of packing things to entertain themselves on the long drive, only to find out to my dismay about an hour into the trip that they had packed a grand total of three picture books and one Rubik's cube. If they had asked to bring along one of Adam's retro handheld games or our portable DVD player, I would have said yes, but apparently they didn't think it was an option. And wouldn't you know, everyone did just fine! We played MadLibs (like flashlights and band-aids, I consider it an emergency essential and always have a pad in the car) and Twenty Questions, listened to audiobooks, and spent a lot of time just talking and looking out the windows. I gave Cici the road atlas and a highlighter and gave her the job of marking our trip progress. We are accidentally living proof that you can drive across the entire country- both ways!!- with kids and no electronics and still pass a good time.

The kids did bump up their time a bit on our desktop computer, which I was okay with because it was all research or creating videos on a 3D Movie Maker program. There was also one day with video games in August-- we usually give each kid unlimited video game time on their birthday, and didn't think it was fair to shortchange the one kid who had a birthday during the three-month window. So he got to play video games on his birthday.

All in all, I'm so glad we took the time off from video games! We will probably do this again next year.