Today’s Childhood:
I refused the five-year-old screen. It had unforeseen consequences
Marie Lunde asked the five-year-old to put down his tablet and go out. Then he disappeared. The son had his own secret plan.
Photo: Private, Pixabay
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This is a comment and expresses the writer’s own opinions.
Mom, can I play Sonic on my iPad? ” asks the five-year-old.
“In the!!”
“Why not?”
“Because you’ve already been sitting on your iPad for three hours today!”
Screen; small colorful squares of spellbinding stimuli that I love to hate and hate to love.
They are a blessing when I want to sleep out on an early Saturday morning, but a curse when I wake up afterwards and have to deal with digital separation anxiety and screen abstinence.
Photo: Private.
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Few things worry me more than these suggestive portals of an infinite and chaotic universe where my children balance on a knife edge between the constructive and the destructive.
Also read: The screen is important for children’s social life
“Go out and play!”
It is demanding to have an overview of what they are looking at at any given time and almost impossible to navigate in a confusing sauce of do’s and don’ts.
Not least, they are a bitter reminder that I have failed to teach my children to entertain themselves.
“I can not bear to hear more about that iPad, go out and play!” I command.
“But mom, there’s nothing out there.”
“It simply came to our notice then. For example, can you find earthworms or make kingfishers? ”
“Hi?”
“Royal animals, they are like that… can you not just hear if Agnar wants to come out and play, then?”
The blonde fringe reluctantly disappears out the door. Do not children today possess ingenuity and the ability to create something themselves?
I surrender before returning to YouTube and continue to make easy risotto with Jamie Oliver.
Feeling a growing uneasiness
It usually takes about eight minutes before the restlessness begins to grow in me. That is how it is today as well. The parent brain is hard-coded so that the absence of noise and fuss automatically means that something is wrong.
My body responds instinctively by pointing its ears and disconnecting the brain from all interaction with Jamie and risotto. I look out the window, but Laurits is not looking at the playground.
He knows very well that he must stay in the break and watch out for cars driving to the properties. Nevertheless, I feel a growing unrest.
There was something about the way he moved as he walked out the door. Not as sluggish and sluggish as he usually is when he is ordered to involuntary activity, but with determination and defiance in the steps, a bit like “now you’re going to fuck me see”.
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“I just feel like I miss earthworms and kingfishers.”
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I wait for a few minutes before I look out the window again and discover that Agnar is playing alone on the playground. But where is Laurits then? “Ola, can you go out and look for Laurits?” I ask through the keyhole in the door. Grunt means yes.
I’m completely out of step with Jamie now and continue to make risotto from memory. After ten minutes, Ola returns without Laurits. He’s not on the ball field or the playground, and Agnar has not seen him.
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The alarm goes off in the top lid and it tightens in the stomach. It’s time for door to door.
Also read (+): She was like everyone else until she was 13 years old and the nurse called from school
Intense relief and fiery anger
I stand in the garden of the neighbors two houses away and stare into their living room when my phone rings. “Iver’s mom” is on the display, and I immediately understand what has happened.
The five-year-old has marched alone one and a half kilometers through the forest, past the school, across the main road and far up in the residential area at the top of Ekebergåsen… to play with Iver from the kindergarten.
The complex feeling of intense relief and flaming anger in all its schizophrenia washes over me. Not only have I been deprived of all illusions that my son would never break the rules or venture so far from home. But Iver’s parents have to believe that we are having a kind of hippie upbringing.
On the other hand, I am overjoyed that my son has not been kidnapped by pedophiles with a Fritzel cellar, while I am a little proud of his independence.
“Laurits just showed up at the door here with us,” says Iver’s mother. “Thank God. Is that where he is yes..hehe..he has not been allowed to, so to speak..hehe », I answer while the shame burns in my cheeks. “He can just sit and wait for a chair, we will come and get it. He is not allowed to play or play ».
Also read: The world’s worst holiday
Unpleasant feeling
Silent treatment is practiced in the car home from Iver, followed by a long moral sermon with tired adult voices and serious snouts.
No, he had not thought that he could get lost or that we would be afraid of him. Yes, he knew he was breaking the rules, but he just wanted to play Sonic Forces. And yes, he promises that he will never run away again without giving notice.
Yet I am left with an uncomfortable feeling of powerlessness and worry. The boy broke all defined rules and walked one and a half kilometers alone for another dose of screen.
And in a short time he will master the digital universe far better than me, but without the same life experience that I possess. And maybe I do not even want to understand the issues and challenges he faces. It’s like sending your child out into the jungle when you yourself grew up in the woods.
Possibly this is a reality that I just have to accept and try as best I can to keep up and set boundaries. I just feel like I miss earthworms and conifers.
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