On a vacation a few years ago, my husband and eight-year-old niece played a game of ping pong. My niece had suggested the game with a hint of bravado about her skill.
After missing all of her shots in the first five minutes, she sighed and said, “This is much easier on Wii.”
It turns out, this was her first real ping pong game and she thought it would be exactly the same. It took a vacation away from the Wii for her to get a taste of the real game.
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I thought of this when I, like many other families, I dropped my child off at overnight camp recently and took home with me that appendage that all kids and most adults have: the cell phone. It’s not allowed there nor is any electronic device with Internet access.
Can you imagine kids voluntarily signing up for this torture? Yes, my daughter spent parts of the ride to camp playing her final games of Fruit Ninja, a game where she frantically swipes the screen to smash floating fruit, but then, it went quiet. No amputation was required. The phone is here and she is there.
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When kids in Bunk 23 want to talk to their friends in Bunk 24, they have to walk next door and talk to them. When, they want to do something, they have to do real life things like kayaking and four-square.
They even do some really goofy old-fashioned sounding things like wheelbarrow races, pie eating contests and skits -- the kind they make up themselves or watch others perform live versus Youtube. Once, when my son had to do research for a themed banner at camp, he had to turn to actual books with pages.
I don’t send her to camp for the technology blackout. When she first started this important summer tradition, she was too young to have a cell phone and ditto for my other children and all the children there and at camps all over. But, as these devices make their way into every aspect of our lives, it becomes more and more valuable to have an extended period of time to be unplugged.
It helps children learn to talk, use their own imaginations and solve problems themselves and with others. I think she is lucky to be in environment of total cell phone blackout to reconnect with the real world for an extended period of time.
I wonder if it would be possible to simulate that for those of us who have aged out of camp? But, I’m not sure it’s possible anymore. Many of us are expected to be in touch and accessible. And, being that, we tend to overdo it, get the “cell phone itch,” and check much more often than needed. I think we all deserve a technology break.
We can probably use a brush up on the skills of looking at the scenery, being alone with our own thoughts for a few minutes and talking to others. Maybe we can wait a few minutes to share every thought that pops into our heads.
My daughter has requested that we bring her phone on visiting day and that makes me a little sad. We have a limited amount of time and would rather not compete with the phone all day, but she misses many people and a few hours of phone use in the course of a seven-week camp session is reasonable. It will be a nice connection to her friends.
Yet, I am confident that the smashing of electronic fruit on a screen will pale in comparison with the real live games of greased watermelon that she will experience this summer.
