do they still call it the boob tube?

The kids' reaction when I told them that we were doing DNSN again, and that the purpose was to observe how far we've come since the last time, and to see what we still need to work on: "Ooohhh, greeaaaat...here comes the moldy milk again!" (I don't remember this, but someone must have left a glass of milk out -- I'm guessing they remembered since they were the ones who cleaned up at the end of the week? Told you it wasn't pretty last time!)

I'm not going to break it down day by day, and Will and I haven't had a chance to sit down together and do a recap on the week, but here's the big thing as far as kid behavior goes (I'll hit adult behavior in another post)...

Screen time. Yuck. Huge issue still. No, really. Huge. And they've taken the opportunity to use DNSN to completely throw our family policy out the window and pretty much do nothing but play video games for the last 72 hours. So...this tells us that the family policy is really a parent policy, that the kids have no real buy-in.

FYI, the policy is that during the summer they get half an hour of screen time a day. Two kids play while the other two "chillax" in their rooms, then they switch. Honestly, Will and I thought this was brilliant, and, in our view, it's worked out well -- everyone gets a little siesta time in the heat of the day, four kids are not having to share the screens all at once, and most of the time the kids are playing, running around outside, and generally being creative.

Will and I actually talked to the kids about this yesterday, and basically they told us that their screen time is so limited that they felt the need to compensate for the fact that they normally get to play so little (yes, they did actually use the word "compensate" -- we must be doing something right, no?) by taking advantage of the fact that they knew we weren't going to stop them.

Still...yuck. So Will and I are contemplating something radical as a result. It goes back to the fact that I've had trouble keeping myself from staying up all night wasting time on the internets this summer, and the idea that we shouldn't be asking the kids to exercise more self control than their parents are capable of. Sorry I ended that sentence with a preposition. I'll keep you posted.