Thornton Mom

It has been 3 months since we had our TV Fast.  Here is what I learned: I am dependent on electronics for babysitting and entertaining my children.  The fast was not only hard for the kids but hard for me.  I also missed sitting together as a family and watching something on a low key night. My kids are more creative without electronics.  Elizabeth wrote more songs, Samantha and Maddie did more crafts, John Derek even worked on a few projects. My kids are nicer without electronics.  There were not so many fights.  They were more willing to be around each other and got along.  We still had fights and so forth but overall things were more harmonious.   My kids interacted more.  Elizabeth especially spent more time with us.  She was not always up in her room or somewhere watching her phone but was playing with the kids and asking how she could help.  Samantha also was more interactive and not so sedentary. We played a lot more games together as a family.  We interacted

This week has been harder than last week was.  Elizabeth put it planely “We’re board!”  They have played all their games, learned all their songs on the piano and ukulele and they are board.  They don’t know how to occupy their time.  So we are all driving each other a little crazy.  I am more uptight, Michael is very clinginy and is constantly asking me, and anyone who comes in contact with him, “can you play with me?” On the positive side Hope has been on lots and lots of walks.  Samantha and John Derek are often outside playing wall ball together.  Elizabeth spends less time in her room and more time with the family.  

For a Family Home Evening we decided that we would present the idea of fasting from electronics.  We opened a discussion by reading from an article titled  A Question of Time , by Elder F. Burton Howard.  In the article he asks a series of questions about television watching.  Some of the questions I liked were:  Does the television have its own room? Do you like it better than your brother?  Does it come with you to dinner?  etc.  We asked the questions to the kids and listened to what they collectively said.  When I asked the questions:  Do your parents spend more time with it than they do with you? Do they spend more money on it than they do on you?  I was amazed to hear them answer "Yes!"  I realized that it is not just the kids who are too preoccupied with electronics that Derek and I need to cut them out too. One of the questions Elder Burton asked was: Could you live without TV for a week? How about a month? All the kids answered yes to this as well.  That gav

Derek and I needed to come up with the rules: Until the end of the school year (5 weeks) we would not have any electronics for entertainment purposes. We would allow school work to be done on the computer as well as email and such. This rule includes all electronic devices. Computers and phones would shut down at 10:00. Phones would still be plugged into the parents bedroom at night. To help us live by these rules we did the following: Derek and I deleted all our games on our phones. Derek also took away all the power cords to the televisions so that they could not be used while mom and dad were gone. Derek and I would also adhere to the rules and refrain from being on our phones too much during family time. We also obtained a Parent Control Software that we put on all the devices and computers that mom can control. We also put a time limit on the amount of social media that could be used. Up next: The Presentation

We actually began by not talking about electronics.  The kids had asked to learn time management so for 2 Family Home Evenings we studied time management from the Self-Reliance My Foundations Manuel.  This helped them get into their minds the ideas of priorities, that there is a certain amount of  time in our lives and we have to decide how to use that time. Don't they look so excited as they watch television?   I was particularly touched by a chapter in President Eyring's book: Because He First Loved Us .  In the chapter titled Child of Promise Pres. Eyring quotes Pres. Brigham Young: With regard to our property, as I have told you many times, the property which we inherit from our Heavenly Father is our time, and the power to choose in the disposition of the same. This is the real capital that is bequeathed unto us by our Heavenly Father; all the rest is what he may be pleased to add unto us. To direct, to counsel and to advise in the disposition of our time,

In December 2016 I felt a growing desire to increase the love in our family; to make the "family central" to our plan as it is to the Lord's. ( The Family: A Proclamation to the World ) I knew that the only way to change how I felt about my family would be to study the words of God.  On several occasions I had studied about the family and had tried to implement things but couldn't ever feel like my heart was being changed.  I decided that this time would be different that this time I would study the Book of Mormon and read the entire thing looking for examples and scriptures and anything that could be applied to the family. I found a blue Book of Mormon on our shelf that my Grandparents had given me years ago, opened it up and wrote the following words: Today I begin a serious study of the family.  We are told that "the family is central to the creator's plan for His children."  I do not feel that I am making my family central to my life.  My g