Two Minute Mom Tips

Screen Free Week

Hi, I’m Regan Barnes from Momivate, and this is your two-minute Mom Tip empowering you to elevate your mothering experience.

I get it! I get it, fellow mamas — I TOTALLY understand why TV is placed on a pedestal in our society. For one thing,

It’s basically a free babysitter, available at our beck and call
And it’s so nice that while my children are busy watching TV, they don’t make very big messes (although this also means they aren’t learning how to clean up messes…)
Another positive is that they tend to get so absorbed in the TV program that they don’t fight with each other! However, this form of hypnotized peace results in fewer opportunities to learn negotiation, compromise, forgiveness, and other positive relationship skills that come with conflict. Besides, when they’re done watching, it feels like they fight MORE than if they hadn’t watched it at all… as though the supposedly benign show has still had a negative effect.
Finally, PBS and similar educational programming make us feel good about letting them watch — “It’s like Preschool at Home” is one of the ditties I’ve heard the network claim… BUT preschool is interactive, multi-sensory, creative, and attendees can practice playing and getting along with peers… so I’m not convinced.

Why would I ever feel inclined to give up the free babysitter, free preschool, and fight-and-mess-preventer?

Well, the nonprofit Campaign for a Commercial Free Childhood has researched why it’s crucial to curb our children’s screen use. They sponsor Screen Free Week, providing tons of resources to help us succeed in this practically impossible endeavor.

Additionally, they help us as parents teach tech-responsibility to our children because the reality is that being screen-free is a luxury not many of us can afford, oddly enough. So we need to be putting the necessary effort into teaching screen self-control starting as soon as the baby pretends her banana is a phone.

It absolutely definitely one hundred percent totally completely and drastically affects the atmosphere in our home when our “master-and-slave” relationship with screens has “we, the people” as the masters, not the slaves.

Mom, try going screen free for a day or two each week, then share if this practice elevates your mothering!

Photo by AJIN AJEESH on Unsplash

Curses of Living in Abundance

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Hi, I’m Regan Barnes from Momivate, and this is your two-minute Mom Tip empowering you to elevate your mothering experience.

America the Beautiful — and the WEALTHY! We moan and groan about the prices of gasoline and groceries… but seriously?!? The poor among us live better than the kings of the middle ages.

Living in an Abundant Society is a blessing… right?!

Well, yes!

I thank God every day in prayer for modern day luxuries and conveniences.

But I’m convinced there are also Curses connected to Living in an Abundance

The Seven Deadly Sins give us a framework to describe how our plentitude contributes to destructive vices.

Could being wealthy encourage lust? Since we have so much free time and expendable income, we can afford to spend time and money on pornography & prostitution… yes, those forms of lust have been around since the beginning of time, but they are more accessible, and –worse– more acceptable amidst abundance.

Since getting a meal is as easy as driving up to the fast-food window and paying a minimal amount for a high-calorie, low-nutrition meal, our gluttony contributes to our obesity and the resultant healthcare crisis, a curse for sure.

We’ve labeled an entire generation “The Me Generation” and talk worriedly about entitlement, a synonym for greed.

Meeting survival needs so easily means that we can focus our efforts on other things — or on nothing. We can be lazy but we won’t starve. Abundance means there are no built-in negative consequences to discourage sloth.

Why would having plenty lead to anger?! Opportunities to develop and practice patience, the antithesis to anger, are fewer and further between amidst abundance.

Envy fuels debt so we can “keep up with the Joneses.” Debt is definitely destructive.

Pride — the attitude that having more than someone else makes you better than they are — hmmm… Is abundance linked to pridefulness? Is childbirth linked to motherhood?

America currently has money for all of our needs and many of our wants, plus enough to help other countries. My hope is that we’ll enjoy the benefits brought on by wealth while conscientiously avoiding the potential curses it could contribute to.

Mom, develop proper monetary attitudes with your children, discussing wants versus needs so that living in abundance remains a blessing. Then share if this practice elevates your mothering!

Photo by Matthew Lancaster on Unsplash