Living Room Time

I am forever trying to find new ways to keep my family close knit and engaged with one another. One of my favorite ways is something called Living Room Time.

It's exactly what it sounds like: All four members of the family must spend an hour together in the living room. One is not required to talk or even do anything with another person. But you must do something that doesn't require batteries or electricity. You may:

Read
Write (without a computer)
play a quiet game by yourself or with another agreeing party
work on some crafty thing
Give someone (preferably the mother :o) a foot massage
daydream
talk

or, do nothing at all. Just listen to everybody breathe if you want.

I love living room time. Living room time is good. It used to be that the living room was the place where most family leisure happened. The family TV was there, the radio, the books, the games. Leisure is portable now, and we don't have to share anything or any space if we don't want to. Certainly not in our own homes.

I thought my kids would balk at having to stay in the living room, away from the electronics of choice. Away from the TV and even neighborhood friends. In fact, they love it. Even my son, who greatly values his "alone time." There is something deliciously comfy about sharing companionable silence with people you love.

Another unexpected side effect of Living Room Time: My husband had finished his book one night and wasn't in the mood to start a new one. He found the dog brush and groomed our dog, a kind of attention she rarely receives. He said, "I should do this more often, but there's no time."

When you take a person's computer and telephone and TV away, it frees up a moment to think about what ELSE you might do. And you find that your dog would love to be rid of her snarled coat. And your child would still love to be read to, and be cuddled with even though he or she is eleven and thirteen. And you discover that leafing through a travel magazine with your husband or son or daughter is a kind of vacation in itself.

Your kids find themselves absorbed in creating a little scrapbook, or doing a Mad Lib, or making people out of pipe cleaners. They begin to re-wire that part of the brain that has to "come up with something to do." And it's just a bit more difficult than flipping a switch. And that's good.

Of course, Living Room Time doesn't happen every night. There is soccer and gymnastics. There is homework and music practice. There is the other kind of life that must also be lived. Sometimes there is arguing during living room time, when people are tired and irritable, and then I wonder whose bright idea this was in the first place.

But a few days a week (during a majority of the school year), I'm surprised to find, with a little effort and planning, we can manage one hour of Living Room Time, a dying practice that deserves to be resurrected. And well it may be, as the economy gets worse and people are in need of cheap entertainment. You can't get cheaper than sitting in your living room!