Mapping the Gap

“You need to touch grass, mate!” my middle yelled to my little while they were playing video games the other day. “What’d you say?” I asked. “Touch grass. It means he needs to get off the screen and take a break.”  I’m often out of the loop with modern vernacular.  I’m happy to be oblivious to what’s “trending,” but this expression, I love.  It captures the magic I’m hoping to wield on this gap year.  It is my most ardent wish and my most dreaded challenge: I’m going to get these boys off screens. I’m going to get these boys “touching grass.” A whole freaking lot of it if I have my way.

On our recent visit to Kansas City, out eating with friends, I proclaimed my great aspiration for the year: We aren’t having video games. The nine-year old girl in the family said with genuine confusion, “Is that possible?” I laughed in a confident adult way and assured her it was possible to live without any screens at all, but inside, there was a voice that shared her legitimate doubt: Is that possible?

My kids are currently in full fiend mode. In Australia, its summer break until early February, we’ve just had Christmas, and I’ve been trying to prep our house for sale and get all our things boxed for storage while my partner works full time. If you think I’ve done this without heavily depending on screens, you highly overestimate our family norm. Sure, I’ve arranged lots of play dates and taken them to run the errands. We’ve spent some hours at the pool, and I’ve put them to work a bit, but for the most part, these boys have been living in virtual worlds I have no familiarity with.  We usually live with video games in moderation, depending on whose “normal” is your measuring stick, but by any standards, we’ve been on a bender for the last month, and I’m about to ask these boys to go cold turkey in a few days.

On January 25, we head off in our van to spend our first month driving along the Australian coast through the state of Victoria and into South Australia, where we are thinking of relocating after the trip. We will hop in the van, life pared down to seven backpacks and some road trip gear.  The house will be in the hands of real estate agents, our dog entrusted to a darling family, plants rehomed, lawn care outsourced, all the goodbyes said, all the stuff sorted. And then what?

Then, it begins. Hungover from indulgence, unfamiliar with reality, unaccustomed to the slow pace of normal life, these boys will start “touching grass.” I am preparing myself.  This won’t be a Sound of Music sort of scene. The withdrawals will wreak total havoc in the confines of our Kia van. During this 10-hour drive, rigors of boredom, mood swings, and plea-bargaining are all to be expected.  Tempers will flare, fights will break out, and the hailstorm of whines will be deafening. But, in the midst of this dramatic scene, with a myriad of colourful pathologies tossing about in our mobile kaleidoscope of chaos, I know which player I need to keep an eye on.  I know the one actor who will make or break the whole operation. It’s the precarious lynchpin of this free-spirited enterprise.  It’s the junky riding shotgun.  Me.

The true dependency that needs to be addressed is my own.  Like most parents of recent generations, I have a certain amount of reliance on screens as a parenting tool, a coping method.  Child-rearing is hard.  Screens take the edge off.  They get you through the day.  They buy us space, silence, and much-needed sanity (some of us are jonesing for this more than others).  They buy us time to do what needs to be done.  They separate the caustic elements of a family whose chemistry is volatile.  They hit the reset on bad days.  They get you through. Then, one day, you wake up, and you realise you haven’t got the skills to cope without them and neither do your kids.  You try to quit, and you can’t.  In the tornado scramble of modern living, it is all too easy to succumb to the repeated requests of your hooked children and surrender to the sacred screen as saviour.  Even when you can see the damage it does, you simply don’t have the energy to fight the force it has become.  Sure, you have some fleeting victories, but the addiction has taken hold.  The devices feel bigger than you.  Like any addict, you learn to live with a bit of shame, a bit of denial.  It’s demoralising.

Maybe you don’t know what I’m talking about, but a lot of parents do. And society is so shaming that many of them are hiding their habit, too embarrassed to be forthright about this massive affliction of modern parenting. (You know, one of the signs you have an addiction is that you hide it.) Wherever you stand in your own screentime campaign, whether you are master of all devices or you are one in the huddled masses battling against the latest bid for your child’s brain (or maybe you’re just shaking your head from the sidelines), please stand with me as a comrade in arms.  Wish me well as I confront my demons. I’ve stocked my war chest.  I’m seeking the strength of a higher power.  I’m prepared to dig my heels in, get dragged through the mud, and breathe my way through the battle zones.  These boys will learn to “touch grass.”  They will find new comforts.  They will discover new habits. They will learn to midwife boredom long enough for it to birth fun. They will learn to get along.  They will learn to avoid the conflict.  I will learn to hold the space, wait it out, and have faith that we don’t need the exit ramp of a screen to survive a hard moment.  This is my opportunity.  With no school and no work, they are all mine, and I am all theirs.  I can’t miss this chance to gain ground in the battle for the integrity of their mind space.

Wish us well. May we be pleasantly surprised with what we find behind the screen.  May these boys have more of the childhood that I did.  And may I, please, be scrubbing out grass stains by the end of it.