#36 Spending too much time online...
Sometimes it's hard to believe that there was homeschooling before the internet. Homeschoolers network with email-lists, we ask for advice on virtual bulletin boards, we buy and sell curriculum online, and we do LOTS of research on the web. Thanks to all the new devices available, we can be online and accessible 24/7, almost anywhere. However, if we let it go too far, it can have a big effect on our relationships. The New York Times recently reported on a study by Sherry Turkle that if parents are unable to disengage from their gadgets and pay attention to their kids, it may do real harm.
My experience is that homeschooling parents do a pretty decent job of balancing their online and family lives, and personally, I find that Facebook and email make being an at-home parent a little less isolating. But I certainly have had moments where I've overdone time on the computer (it's generally a sign that I'm not getting enough time with adults in the real world.) As a homeschool mom, I consider one of my main responsibilities is to model the kind of behavior I'd like to see my kids use, and so I make a special effort to treat the people in the room as more important than the ones online, unless I've excused myself to complete a specific task. Essentially these are the same rules my parents used for the phone when I was growing up-- if you're in the middle of a conversation or activity with someone, you don't answer the phone unless you're expecting an important, time-sensitive call/text/email (and "important" should be defined in a way that makes the exception rare), but once someone is in the middle of a phone/online conversation or task, they can take a reasonable amount of time away from the people in the room for it. I'm not 100% successful in striking the balance I'd like, but I'm working on it.
For our kids, the main rule is that if someone is having trouble treating the rest of us kindly and politely (including responding to questions) while using a technical gadget , it's time for the gadget to be turned off/put away. But we haven't reached the teen years, and are starting our first experiment with online learning next school year, and I suspect things will get more complicted then.
What are your family rules for using technology? How do you find balance?
