Turn off screens and turn on life

As most of you know, our family have already chosen to live TV free. The TV our apartment came with has pictures of animals and nature taped all over the screen so we don't have to look at the ugly black screen. Saule had a brief February love affair with "Dora" on youtube during our move here, which thankfully is now a distant memory. 

We are also happy to be able to live phone free. I remember the good old days when telephones stayed at home, and if you needed to leave a message you could (if the machine was turned on which in our house it never was). I had a cell phone for a time, and I can say I don't miss it AT ALL. All that stuff that people think they get from cell phones is in my mind out weighed by the burden they come with. Did you know life was just as good pre-cell phone? You could still keep track of your family, talk to your friends, have an alarm, have a calendar, listen to music, and tell the time!

HOWEVER computers are very much a part of our family, and I really have a hard time with that. 

I justify to myself all the screen time I get from my 7 year old macbook but the truth haunts me- I should be doing something else MOST of the time I am on the computer. 

SO you can understand how happy I was when I found out about screen-free week. 

Here is the INFO: 

Screen-Free Week, presented by the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood,  is April 18-24, 2011!

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Kids, families, schools, and communities pledge to turn off screens and turn on life.

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Did you know?

School-age children spend nearly twice as many hours with screen media such as television, video games, computers, and hand-held devices as they do in school.

Television use is at an all-time high among preschoolers—according to Nielsen, young children spend, on average, more than 24 hours a week watching TV.

Screen time is habituating and linked to poor school performance, childhood obesity, poor sleep habits and attention problems.

Forty percent of 3-month-old infants are regular viewers of television and DVDs—even though the American Academy of Pediatrics recommends no screen time for children under two.

Children are spending way too much time with screens—and it’s not good for them. That’s why more than 60 leading health, education, and childcare organizations actively support this year’sScreen-Free Week (April 18-24, 2011), the annual celebration where children, families, schools and communities turn off screens and turn on life.