play outside in the dirt, part 2

I completely missed making my real point in yesterday’s post – namely, what happens years later when you’ve emphasized outside (aka non-electronic) time for your kids?

In our case, we have two relatively well-adjusted, calm, and focussed children. They are fourteen and twelve years old and participate in our daily family life with minimal complaining. True, our younger son is always trying to get me to ease up on my strict electronics rules but he and his older brother respect our decision to keep the TV and XBox off (for the most part) during school days. We have made two concessions to them, however: one hour of TV on Tuesday nights (so they can view a taped “Hawaii Five-O” episode) and one hour of game time on Wednesday mornings when our younger son has late start (we used to call it “Wii Wednesday”; since we traded the Wii for an Xbox, it unfortunately doesn’t have the same catchiness).

The rest of their free time is spent reading, hanging out with friends and interacting with friends via texting and social media (plus a little bit of empire building types of games on their iTouches).