Why Does Granny Have a Screensaver?

Emma was in kindergarten the year Granny had surgery to replace one of her heart valves. I understand these two events wouldn’t normally be linked together, but in this case, I think you will agree with me that they do…

The evening before the surgery was spent with Granny in her hospital room talking, reassuring one another and even cracking several jokes about the fact that the valve she would receive would either be courtesy of a cow or a pig.

I noticed Emma didn’t say much, but didn’t think too much about it because a) I knew she was worried about her Granny and b) Emma wasn’t a chatty little girl. She was my quiet, contemplative one.

Of course she was quiet. There was a lot to take in and try to process. So I made a mental note to myself to give her a little extra reassurance before tucking her into bed that night. But as it turns out, Emma was making sense of things the way kids growing up in this day and age would.

As we were walking to our car after telling Granny goodnight, Emma looked up at me and asked, “Momma, why does Granny have a screensaver?”

“What,” I asked?

“Why does Granny have a screensaver?”

It took me a few seconds to figure out what she was talking about, but then it hit me—Emma thought Granny’s heart monitor was a computer! Thankfully I was smart enough not to laugh at her. Instead I agreed that the monitor looked like a computer (as she understood a computer to be), but that it was really a machine that was watching over Granny’s heart.

We’ve laughed about this several times since then, but today I want to use this little incident to remind you to not deprive your children of the fun that can be had and the simple joys of life not associated with a computer in any of its various forms. Or as Miranda Lambert sings…

Hey, whatever happened to waitin' your turn
Doing it all by hand,
'Cause when everything is handed to you
It's only worth as much as the time put in
It all just seemed so good the way we had it
Back before everything became automatic.

So here is my challenge to you:

Don’t allow phones or other devices at the dinner table

Make it clear that texting one another while in the same house is never acceptable

Write messages to your children using paper and pen

Help your little ones write cards and letters to their grandparents and encourage your older children to do the same

Play BOARD or CARD games as a family—not video games

Cook together…from scratch.

 

Have a sixties or seventies weekend at home--doing things the way they did back then

 

Spend one Saturday a month working together or learning a skill that requires you to do things by hand (woodworking, gardening, embroidery, crochet, baking, etc.)

While each generation makes both positive and negative contributions to society, we’ve allowed most of the positives from the past to become nearly extinct. Let’s bring a few of them back, okay, because children need to know that not everything revolves around hard drives, apps and the cloud.

Love,

Momma D