Put Away The Cell Phone

Cell phones are fun and good for emergencies, but the prevalent overuse of these communication devices has caused a break-down in communication. On a daily basis I have friends sending me text messages, but I wish they did not because I do not like paying for text messaging services. Also, it takes much longer to respond to a text message than it does to pick up the phone and call someone, especially if you do not have a mini-keyboard on your phone. In a controversial new move some educators have begun to teach their students how to text message and to create their own glossaries of abbreviates. These educators argue that these lessons are current and help to stimulate student interest in reading and writing. However, I feel text messaging is something we can all learn outside the classroom thank you very much. It seems more and more students are not learning about classic literature, which is a much more important emphasis in the classroom in my opinion. Today I urge everyone to put down their cell phone for an hour and talk to their kids about why texting is truly a waste of time. Here are some activities you can do with your children instead.

Make up a secret code using the letters of the alphabet. Everyone gets a piece of paper and they will write their "code messages" down and exchange them. Better yet, you could make a code language for daily communication tasks on a whiteboard. For instance, if you want your kids to do a certain chore you could write it in code language and have them figure it out, which would be more fun than simply telling them to do the dishes. When I was a kid I always enjoyed doing chores when my mom made it into a game.

Five minutes of playing a board game at a time would take up less time than sending several text messages. Tell you kids they can invite their friends over to play board games instead of texting back and forth. Make cookies and drinks for the kids, yes I know this sounds very Leave It To Beaver, but if you did this once a month on your day off your children would remember it. My favorite board game is trivial pursuit and my family used to like to make their own questions and andwers for the game. This was fun because we could play the game over and remember all the fun questions/answers we created.

The best way to get some exercise would be for everyone to go for a walk and tell each other stories. You can people watch and lets say you see a man and his newspaper blows away, make a funny story up about that! However, do not make fun of anyone, just tell make believe stories to each other to pass the time, which is much more fun than text messaging. Actually you can talk about anything on family walks and it is a much better time to have conversations than in front of a TV. My family used to turn off the TV and go on walks because we would actually listen to each other as we were walking. When someone is watching TV or text messaging they are distracted and not listening to other people around them. So I say we should all spend a day putting down our cell phones and turning off our TV's! We will be able to spend quality time with our families without the impediment of electronic devices.