The cardinal virtues - prudence, justice, fortitude, and temperance - help protect the "mind and character" from addiction or disordered attachment:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cardinal_virtues
I try to help my son understand and cultivate these virtues. He is 11, and is home-schooled.
Practically, right now we use several exercises specifically intended to combat screen attachment:
1) he is supposed to set a timer when getting on his iPad (totally up to him, but HE chooses to use it)
2) two regular days a week when he can Skype with his best friends (looks forward to the social time more than the game time)
3) typically a once-a-month screen detox for 3 to 7 days (no screen time, period.)
The most effective exercise is the screen detox. Within a day his attitude changes for the better: he practices his piano more eagerly, he acts sweeter, he finds "real" things to get into, and is more creative than usual. We're doing a detox right now; he learned backgammon from a friend at his chess club yesterday, made a backgammon board this morning before school, and taught me how to play when I got home from work. ...typical example of what happens during a detox. In the summer it was usually things like playing football or collecting bugs and lizards outside that happened when the iPad was put on the shelf.
I'm ashamed (and humbled) to say that I need a detox more than he does. But I grew up not being taught to develop virtue, and I have a lot of self-correction that I'm working through. Setting my son up to not have to deal with addiction in the first place is something I can give him that I wish I had been given. His generation also has (soon to be "Saint") Carlo Acutis as a role model.
I need to set up a Pi-hole, and filter out adult website URLs for our home internet.
Curious, do you tell him about your own struggles with it? It seems like that the both of you are learning it together, so what kind of reflections have you made with yourself, when you look at your son figuring it out?
I try to help my son understand and cultivate these virtues. He is 11, and is home-schooled.
Practically, right now we use several exercises specifically intended to combat screen attachment:
1) he is supposed to set a timer when getting on his iPad (totally up to him, but HE chooses to use it)
2) two regular days a week when he can Skype with his best friends (looks forward to the social time more than the game time)
3) typically a once-a-month screen detox for 3 to 7 days (no screen time, period.)
The most effective exercise is the screen detox. Within a day his attitude changes for the better: he practices his piano more eagerly, he acts sweeter, he finds "real" things to get into, and is more creative than usual. We're doing a detox right now; he learned backgammon from a friend at his chess club yesterday, made a backgammon board this morning before school, and taught me how to play when I got home from work. ...typical example of what happens during a detox. In the summer it was usually things like playing football or collecting bugs and lizards outside that happened when the iPad was put on the shelf.
I'm ashamed (and humbled) to say that I need a detox more than he does. But I grew up not being taught to develop virtue, and I have a lot of self-correction that I'm working through. Setting my son up to not have to deal with addiction in the first place is something I can give him that I wish I had been given. His generation also has (soon to be "Saint") Carlo Acutis as a role model.
I need to set up a Pi-hole, and filter out adult website URLs for our home internet.