Our homes are filled with various screens; the television screen, our mobile phones, our iPad and the likes. The more time we spend on these screens the more time we spend apart from each other. Sit down and calculate how many minutes, hours you spend daily on your phone or television screen?
As an example, I spend time writing, recording, answering and responding to all sorts of issues. And there are some of you out there whose vocation/profession involves the screen, and if you are not careful you will find yourself engaged with the same at home. And you know that too much time on screen affects your eyesight, too much time sitting down at the front of the screen has an effect on your back, too much time sitting down by the screen steals your time!
And I am sure there will be many more side-effects of too much screen time. How then can you introduce a screen time free to your home? It is possible to introduce screen-free time into your home.
You may have a rule of no T.V before a certain time in your home.
You may have a rule of a certain amount of time on all technology that has screens in your home.
You may have a particular time of the day, where everybody submits their phones, iPad to a certain place, and the T.V off for up to two hours while people go and take a siesta, or spend time listening to God, read their Bible, books or do something fun together as a family. Particularly when you have little ones, having story time helps a time when you pick two or three books to read to everybody and encourage the older ones to read out for the younger ones to listen and thereafter take questions and responses.
In order to make this a fun time, you may provide a little snack and make it interactive so that the children long for a screen-free time in the home.
May the Lord who gave you the gift of your home, also help you to know how to make sure screen time is not causing a huge disruption in your family relationship.
There are several practical steps laid out in this article and my suggestion is that you would take a notebook, write down the ideas you have gleaned from them and get praying. Ask the Lord to help you prioritise, adapt and live out the instructions He has given. May the Lord be your guide as you press in to become the godly wife and mother that brings glory and honour to His name in Jesus’ name.
Our generation has advanced beyond belief when it comes to technology. If the woman in the home is not careful, she will experience overcrowding caused by technology in her relationship with her husband and her children.
While technology is a great tool, it can also be an instrument that can destroy your family relationships in your home with your husbands and your children. To disallow technology from bringing division between you and those in your household, let us reflect on:
1. Motherhood and technology: there is a growing proportion of children, including toddlers abandoned to the parenting hands of technology, children as young as a few months old can operate technology. Meanwhile, there are basics of life that mothers are to inculcate into their children as they play, touch, sing and do activities together with them. Unfortunately, sibling’s time together is also invaded by technology, they spend more time with technology than with each other. It is rather unfortunate that the advent and the advancement of technology appear to be pushing against the privilege that mothers ought to have in their children’s lives through spending good and quality time with their children. Thereby instilling in them the basics of life, and this also affects siblings spending good and quality time together.
How do you combat this challenge? You must recognise that technology is meant to be your servant; it is to serve you. It is not for you or your child to become the servant of technology. Therefore, put a definition to your motherhood and technology in your home.
In your own home, what is technology? Is it the one mothering and substituting for you in your child’s life? How can you use technology wisely as a mother? Sit down to make a note of the role technology plays in your children’s lives and the effect of the same, and then, seek God in prayer to put things in the right perspective.
2. Do not give your husband’s place to technology: the strength of a marital relationship depends so much on the time couples spend in talking and interacting together as they relate with the Lord. Unfortunately, the advancement of technology has caused many couples to replace each other with one form of technology or another. Many husbands are left to themselves while wives engage with technology.
Some husbands pour the love and the affection they have for their wives into technology. Some of our bedrooms or bedtimes are interrupted by mobile phones. While couples retire to bed and both still continue to interact with mobile phones. This ought not to be so.
What usually happens between you and your husband when you have gone to bed? Is your husband by himself on the bed or on the phone or watching television in the bedroom? Are you engrossed with messages on your phone, catching up with messages you couldn’t read because of business at work, or your tight schedule? Do you then use bedtime as an opportunity to ignore your husband, and engage with your phone or catch up with a programme on your bedroom T.V?
One rule I had to subject myself to is that I will not take my mobile phone to my bedside or my room when I go to bed. I believe it is an honour, I owe my husband.
Technology as good and useful as it is must not come between you and your husband. If it is already coming between you, then, you need to make amendment as soon as possible.
So, did something meant to be good become death to me Roman7:13a