Screen your Kids for Drugs

Our kids are getting addicted to screen time. No, not like, “Yeah, we should cut back on that a little.” Like you might as well be giving your kids crack.

A guy named Dr. Nicholas Kardaras just wrote a book called Glow Kids: How Screen Addiction is Hijacking our Kids – and How to Break the Trance. I recently read his article on the subject, and although I have never heard of the man before, my usual exhaustive two-minute Google search confirmed that despite the similarity in last names, he is in no way related to or associated with the Kardashians, so he’s OK in my book.

It was a short article, but filled with references to studies by other smart-sounding people from places like UCLA and the Pentagon, all saying the same thing: Screens are REALLY bad for kids!

Here’s the scary upshot - screens affect the brain’s frontal cortex - which is presumably in the front, and apparently in control executive functions including impulse control – exactly the same way cocaine does. In other words, a brain on Minecraft looks the same as a brain on drugs. They also said technology is so hyper-arousing that it raises dopamine levels as much as sex.

So apparently, instead of more screen time, you might as well be encouraging your kids to have sex, smoke crack, or, depending on how much screen time they get every day, both.

In fact, as the article points out, besides the obvious negative health effects of drugs, they might actually be a better thing for a human to become addicted to, because quitting is easier. It’s much simpler to get into a drug-free environment than a screen-free one, unless you happen to be someplace like Tijuana, Columbia, or Detroit.

That’s it for Casa de Smidge. No more screens.

I have always had a natural inclination to limit our boys’ screen time. My only real reasoning when I started was, “I didn’t have them as a kid, so you don’t need them.” That logic is good enough for me, and I also apply it to things like GoPro cameras, hoverboard scooters, five hundred-dollar baseball bats, and name-brand breakfast cereals. It saves us quite a bit of money every year.

We don’t have any game consoles, and they don’t have any handheld devices other than our old smartphones. Well, after this article, those are officially gone now, too.

Now that our kids will have no home screen time at all except for the occasional TV show or movie, I have come up with a list of alternate activities since I know we’ll need to be ready for the pushback from our crack-addicted children as they detox from the glow.

A short list of things to do when you feel the need to stare at a screen:

- Go swim in our pool. Or sit next to the pool and stare at the water. It sorta glows like a screen. Or wait until I’m not paying attention and get the ladder, climb up onto the patio roof and see if you can jump all the way into the deep end. Even if you miss and break your legs, that hospital visit will be better than checking into a rehab clinic. Plus, you will have learned a far more valuable lesson about velocity, trajectory, and gravity than you could have ever gleaned from Angry Birds.

- Burn ants with a magnifying glass. It’s far more useful to me than you killing zombies on a screen, because we will have less ants. Plus, at some point, your feeble little mind will put your finger under the glass to see just how hot it is, and you’ll learn a real-life lesson about focal point energy than simply cannot be taught with a Play Station.

- Make a mud pie. It’s messy. There is no life lesson to be learned. It’s just fun and squishy. Plus, it will give us a great excuse to make you take a shower.

- Run. It’s handy, because the more you run, the faster you get. Remember – you don’t have to be faster than the bear. You just have to be faster than the video game kid you were standing next to when you saw the bear.

- Do some pull-ups. They are handy for when you need to climb up, over, or out of something. You’ll be back up on the right side of the zoo fence while the video game kid is still stuck in the gorilla’s enclosure.

- Read a book. Your dad is an author, for goodness sake. Let’s keep up appearances.

- Learn to make cocktails. It’s a skill you’re going to want later in life, and it would be great if I could just order stuff instead of having to make it myself.

- Learn to cook. See above.

- Play with your Legos. They’re like Minecraft, but you can touch them. You have no idea how jealous I am of your fancy curved Legos, your Star Wars Legos, and your Legos that actually shoot projectiles. You are spoiled beyond belief when it comes to Legos. Earn it!

- Open a lemonade stand. We used to be OK with the computer games where you ran a restaurant or ran a hotel, thinking at least they were educational, but no more. Run an actual business that makes actual products to sell to actual people. You will learn so much more, and you will make actual money. I will then teach you about something the video games never did: expenses. You will pay me rent, you will pay me for the supplies, and I will tax your profits. Welcome to reality.

- Wander around the neighborhood. It’ll be just like Pokemon Go, but without the screen. You’ll actually notice actual physical things around you, and you’ll be forced to figure out which way to go to get home, without the help of Google Maps. That’s an important skill that almost no one your age will grow up with.

- Play an instrument. It will get you girls later. Video games will not.

- Ride your bike off a jump. It’s fun in a way that video games can never be. You might get hurt. That’s good. You can’t get hurt playing video games. Not being able to get hurt is bad. Nothing good in life comes without risk.

- Make nachos. Share them with your father. Nachos are delicious.

- When all else fails and you can’t think of anything else to do, take a nap. You will get nothing accomplished at all and it will still be better for you than screen time. Plus, you’ll be less grumpy.

In the meantime, you will hate me because I am unfair and all your friends get to play video games and I am unfair and mean and unfair. I’m perfectly OK with that, because when you are not busy resenting me you will be able to concentrate on solving a problem. You will be able to create a story in your mind and then communicate it to another person coherently. You will be able to have a conversation with another human being that involves eye contact and active listening. You will stand up straight. You will be able to survive outdoors. You will be strong and tanned and tough.

And I don’t want you to worry for a second about “falling behind” when it comes to technology. You’ll be just fine. You are smart and resourceful. When you grow up there will be people your age who will know far more about the inner workings of the devices you all use. There will be people your age who will be far better able to create the “code” to make things work. That’s just fine. In fact, it’s great.

You’ll hire those people.

I love you,

Dad.

See you soon,

-Smidge

Copyright © 2016 Marc Schmatjen

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Also visit Marc’s Amazon.com Author Page  for all his books. Enjoy!

Remote Training My Kids

I have decided what I really want for Christmas. Shock collars. For my kids. I know shock collars are traditionally put on hunting dogs, but I see some real potential for them in the arena of parenting. Actually, they are now known as “remote trainers” in the hunting world, since most of them have a feature where you can first send your misbehaving pooch an audible tone instead of a shock. If they don’t get the message to heel from the beep in their ear, then you can hit them with the voltage to straighten them out.

That’s a good system, and “remote trainer” is a good name for what I want to outfit my children with. I’m not sure a big dog collar is really the way to go with kids, but it will have to do until the technology catches up and we can have implantable chips behind their ears.

The idea hit me the other morning while I was in my office. My boys were in the game room down the hall watching early morning cartoons, and my wife was still sleeping. They were forgetting to use their whisper voices during an argument about Phineas and Ferb, and I was forced to get out of my chair and walk down the hall to shush them. Since my wife was sleeping in the next room, I couldn’t just remain seated and yell for them to be quiet.

Besides the obvious irony of yelling “Be quiet,” we are trying to do less remote voice-activated parenting, not more. Standing in one place and yelling castigations at your kids is a very Walmart style of parenting, and we are looking to parent at at least a Target or Costco level. The remote trainer would help tremendously in that effort, since our house is 3200 square feet. I don’t want to yell, but I also don’t want to walk up all those damn stairs again just to quietly tell one of my boys to stop sitting on the other one.

The children’s remote trainer I’m envisioning would go much further than the canine version, since we are dealing with humans here, even if the difference is hard to perceive most days. The kid’s collars would obviously have the shock feature and the audible tone, but they would also have a two-way intercom, a closed-circuit video camera, a muted listening mode, and even a heart rate monitor.

Picture the scene:

You are lounging comfortably in the living room with your favorite (insert time-sucking device here). You hear one of your offspring fail to use his or her nice words. The situation is escalating, and soon there will be hurt feelings (or noses) if cooler adult heads do not intervene. You call out for your spouse, but they have obviously fled the house in search of a more peaceful environment. It is up to you to discipline your children. Drat.

If you are striving to parent above a Walmart level, this is when you would normally have to resist your natural urge to yell “Knock it off!” at the top of your lungs and actually move your butt out of the chair. No need! Enter your saving grace, the Smidge Long distAnce Parenting Electronic Module, or SLAP ‘EM, for short. Just pull up the SLAP ‘EM app on your smartphone, choose the offending child from the home screen, and pick your mode of action. A friendly audible tone to alert the offending youngster that punishment is coming if immediate action is not taken to apply the golden rule and use your nice words, or perhaps a friendly conversation with the tyke on the intercom located just below his or her chin. After getting laid out on the carpet a few times with the 2000-volt “enforcer” mode, your little cutie pies should straighten up and fly right at the first hint of sound from their new collars.

Afraid they might try to remove the collar and negate its effectiveness? Not to worry. Any unauthorized tampering with the locking clasp and the enforcer mode is triggered. Zap! They won’t try that twice.

Things a little too quiet in the next room? Check the video feed and listen in to see what your angel is up to. You can check their vital stats, too. Monitor heart rate and breathing for their safety, and also to make sure they didn’t somehow Houdini the thing off and leave it lying on the floor while you mistakenly think they are just having an impromptu nap.

With a 20-year battery life and the app running off your Wi-Fi at home, and your cell signal when your child is roaming, the SLAP ‘EM will have an unlimited range, so you can use it when they are in elementary school all the way through grad school. You can monitor their school day from the comfort of your couch, or if you prefer, shareable access codes to the smartphone app will allow other parents and even their teachers to keep them in line at all times. Sleepovers will cease to be the chaotic nightmare they once were when all the kids see their names on your SLAP ‘EM home screen.

“What about my younger kids?” you ask. Although we no longer have any toddlers in the house, I remember them as being a handful. They make toddler leashes, but do you really want to step over that line and put your toddler on an actual leash? Of course you do. You just don’t want to be actually seen in public with your kid on an actual leash, but in public is exactly where you need it. Problem solved with the SLAP ‘EM! You have your cell phone in your hand at all times anyway, so why not let that fact put the fear of God into your little munchkins? It’s an electronic leash, with no unsightly, shame-inducing actual physical tether.

No kid will be safe when you can always reach out and SLAP ‘EM! (All rights reserved) Look for them at fine retailers -- or at least at Walmart -- by next Christmas.

What will all this surveillance and instant punishment do to the next generation of children? No telling, but I’m sure everything will turn out just fine.

See you soon,

-Smidge

Copyright © 2013 Marc Schmatjen

Check out The Smidge Page on Facebook. We like you, now like us back!

Also visit Marc’s Amazon.com Author Page  for all his books. Enjoy!

Low Tech, Low Fat Kids

My wife and I recently won two tickets to go see the Sacramento Kings play the visiting Portland Trail Blazers at Power Balance Pavilion. Since real babysitters cost money, and both sets of grandparents were out of town, we decided that I would take our seven-year-old, Son Number One, to the game and she would stay home with the other two. Win for me!

They were really good seats, down close to the court, so I was almost as excited as the seven-year-old, but he beat me out on the excite-o-meter since it was his first professional basketball game, and he got to stay up way past his bed time, on a school night, no less.

Almost immediately after we sat down in our seats, I became skeptical about the appropriateness of our surroundings for my son. The rap music that was blaring during the pre-game show contained some language that was less than desirable, and I had to answer some pretty interesting questions about the Kings' cheerleaders’ dance moves. Then there was all the swearing from the stands once the game started. (Actually, that was me. The Kings couldn't get a rebound to save their lives.)

It ended up being an enjoyable evening all around, but it served to reinforce my belief that I need to keep my children insulated from the hip-hop/sultry dancer/foul-mouthed sports fan side of life for as long as possible. There is a lot of trash out there, and it is just waiting to be a major influence on my kids if I let it.

The way I see it, the main way that the trash is attempting to enter my home is through the television and the internet. Technology, in general, seems to be my enemy in the battle to raise mentally and physically healthy children. Technology and fast food seem to be my top two foes. Anyone who has witnessed the crack addiction-like effects of television and French fries on a five-year-old cannot argue that point.

My kids sometimes think I'm being mean when I tell them they can't have a Wii, or can't eat every meal at McDonald’s and Taco Bell, so in an attempt to explain my position, I offer them this:

An open letter to my children

I love you very much, and I want you to grow up to be strong and smart. That is precisely why I have these rules:

You will be the last kid you know to have a cell phone. You don't need one. There will never be any hypothetical emergency situation that you can dream up that will change my mind. For the rest of your life, you will always be within three feet of eight other people's phones. You may get your own phone when you can afford to buy one and the airtime plan to go with it. It will be a flip-phone with no Internet access of any kind. If those are no longer available ten years from now, you will be out of luck.

You will never have an iPhone, an iPad, and iPod, an iTouch, or an iAnything. Apple products are expensive -- arguably overpriced -- and you don't have any money. My money is not for buying you iPads. My money is for buying you heat and shelter and food.

We will never own a Wii, an X-box, a DS, a PS3, or any other random string of letters and numbers denoting a video game console. The reason for this is two-fold. For starters, you get enough screen time as it is, since your mom and I taught you how to turn on the Disney channel in the morning so we could sleep in every once in a while. We're not proud of that, but when you have kids of your own someday, you will understand. I do not want you becoming pasty-white, fat little drooling slobs. At our house, your Wii is the back yard. Secondly, I do not want to spend my money on video games. I know you will get all the video game time you will ever need at your friends' houses, and that is a much more financially prudent solution for me.

You will be allowed to have a Facebook account when you are 18 years old, and not a minute sooner. You will be allowed to use the Internet under strict parental supervision to research school papers and look up cool videos of lions attacking zebras and such, but other than that, it is off-limits. If you need to talk to your friends, you may ride your bike to their house, or talk to them at school. If you are the only kid at your whole school that doesn't have a Facebook or Twitter account, I will take that as a sign that I am doing my job. If you don't like that answer, you may get your own job, your own house, and your own computer, and go crazy.

You have already eaten at more fast food restaurants in your few short years of life than I did in my first eighteen. As much as your mom and I try to avoid them, they are somewhat a fact of life these days, but the food at almost all of them is bad for you. I know it’s delicious, but it will kill you early. That is an important life lesson in and of itself. This is the reason that you have to eat all of your broccoli at home, and you never get soda. You will notice that whenever you complain about eating your vegetables, I smile. That’s because doing my job makes me happy.

In short, in an effort to make sure you grow up healthy and fit, your mom and I will feed you right, and strive to make sure that the only technology you ever own as a child is the GPS tracking device that we will have surgically implanted under your skin to keep track of you in your early teen years. You’re welcome in advance.

With love,

Dad

P.S. – No, you may not go get a second opinion from your mother.

See you soon,

-Smidge

Copyright © 2012 Marc Schmatjen

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