As a librarian, I am constantly telling parents how important it is to model reading behavior to their children.\u00a0 Books and magazines should be in the home, and care givers should take advantage of reading opportunities outside of the home.\u00a0 I do these things, of course,\u00a0 but as technology creeps more and more into my life, I realize that I am also constantly modeling screen time.<\/p>\n
This summer I took my two daughters (aged 3 and 6) away for a month; a month living in a cabin by a lake with no screens.\u00a0 If I wanted to connect, there was effort involved, and I would physically have to take my daughters with me to do it.<\/p>\n
At first it seemed a bit hard.\u00a0 What was I missing online?\u00a0 After all, this was during ALA.\u00a0 All those updates and tweets\u2026all those pictures with Neil Gaiman!\u00a0 But what did we gain as a family?<\/p>\n
Besides the obvious swimming and playing and outdoor pursuits, I read 24 books.\u00a0 Some were just for me, and many were aloud to my daughters.\u00a0 We settled nicely into a routine of starting and ending our day with family reading.\u00a0 Excitement levels rose as our \u201cfinished reading\u201d\u009d pile got bigger and bigger.<\/p>\n
I know that this fall when I talk to parents, I will be modifying what I usually say.\u00a0 Modeling reading is important but maintaining a balance between face-time and screen-time seems even more so.\u00a0 In an age where young children see their adults (teachers, librarians, parents) constantly plugged in (twittering, fb, texting, calling) it may be more important than ever to take time out, unplug, and simply read together.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
As a librarian, I am constantly telling parents how important it is to model reading behavior to their children.\u00a0 Books and magazines should be in the home, and care givers should take advantage of reading opportunities outside of the home.\u00a0 I do these things, of course,\u00a0 but as technology creeps more and more into my life, I realize that I am also constantly modeling screen time. This summer I took my two daughters (aged 3 and 6) away for a month; a month living in a cabin by a lake with no screens.\u00a0 If I wanted to connect, there was effort involved, and I would physically have to take my daughters with me to do it. At first it seemed a bit hard.\u00a0 What was I missing online?\u00a0 After all, this was during ALA.\u00a0 All those updates and tweets\u2026all those pictures with Neil Gaiman!\u00a0 But what did we gain as…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":83,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":"","_members_access_role":[],"_members_access_error":""},"categories":[95,36],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-854","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blogger-stacy-dillon","category-slice-of-life"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/854","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/83"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=854"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/854\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=854"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=854"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=854"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}