08 Dec 12 digital detox blogs of Christmas #3
Our Presence Not Presents campaign challenged twelve bloggers to put down their phones for two days pre-Christmas, to experience logging-off and focusing on family and friends. We hope that their stories about their experiences will inspire you to consider a digital detox of your own. Next up in the series is …
Raising the Rings
Jade is a busy parenting and lifestyle blogger and mum to the very cute Toby and Teddy. She spends most of her time working from home, juggling her blog with looking after the two boys “they constantly see me stressed, relatively un-engaged or sat at the table behind a laptop while they vie for my attention”. So she leapt at the chance of trying a digital detox “it was my chance to prove to myself and, most importantly, my boys that Mummy is here and that they are my first priority”.
“A lot of the time we’re at home I had just been leaving them to their own devices. And it’s sad. I’m sad about it.”
Jade was very motivated to do the challenge because of wanting to devote more time to her boys “they are growing up far too quickly for my liking. Like, literally, right before my eyes.” But even with the realisation that they would appreciate more of her time she found it hard “I won’t lie. It was incredibly tough. I struggled. A lot. I haven’t been without my phone for years.”
However, armed with her digital detox challenge pack Jade developed some really good strategies to deal with those impulses to check her phone “If I felt like I needed to access emails or check my Whatsapp I did start writing things down to keep my fingers busy. ” She also went on a ‘real world’ supermarket shop and enjoyed a fun hands-on sensory play session with both boys where they played with lentils, rice and pasta she put out for them.
“My phone is the first thing I look at in the morning. It’s the last thing I look at before I go to sleep and it’s usually picked up at least once in the night too”
One of the most rewarding things about reading Jade’s blog was to see how she began to realise how much she was over-using her phone and the positive impact on her children when she stopped doing that, which was the point of the challenge!
“It was absolute bliss having an hour where they just played together. I’ve never known my children to react so positively to something and it was a really beautiful thing. It made me realise that not only are they missing out on a part of me, but I am missing out on them.”
Even if you can’t commit to coming on a digital detox retreat with us, why not try giving our Christmas digital detox challenge a go? It’s only two days offline and it’s the perfect time to be focusing fully on family and friends.
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