Talking with Your Children...an endangered activity
Today, the average American watches about 4 hours of television per day. Simply put, considering a 24 hour day, we spend about 1/6 of our lives sitting in front of a television. The average lifespan today is 78.44 years, leaving us with the realization that Americans will spend just over 13 years of their lives watching TV. Those statistics didn’t take into account the increasing popularity of video screens in cars, but what would you do with 13 years if you could live them over again?
Worse is to consider that out of the approximately 16 hours per day we are awake, we spend 25% of that time mindlessly being “entertained” by television. How productive could you be if you had an extra four hours each day?
The use of in-car videos only makes the problem worse, as the effect on children is even more alarming. Thousands of studies on children and the effects of television show some sad statistics.
- Parents spend but 38.5 minutes per week in meaningful conversation with their children.
- Children spend 1,680 minutes per week watching television (that's 28 hours).
- 66% of Americans regularly watch TV while eating dinner.
- The average American child spends almost 1,500 hours per year watching television. That’s 62.5 days or more than two months out of each year!
Not that there aren’t some worthwhile shows for kids (e.g., Sesame Street), but studies have shown that exposure to so much mindless entertainment stifles creativity, reflection, and imagination in children. It lessens social interactions with others through play and conversation. It may lead to shortened attention spans and hyperactivity. In addition, the exposure to print media is dramatically diminished, affecting long-term reading ability.
Getting back to my original point, the family in the van missed a wonderful opportunity to talk with their kids, share their experiences of the day, and simply enjoy one another’s company. Granted, when I was a kid, we didn’t have videos in the car. But we occupied our time as a family engaged in conversation, singing songs, playing car games. Here are a few suggestions...
Counting Cows--count the cows on your side of the road as you travel along. If you come to a cemetery on your side of the road, you have to bury them all and start over. The one with the most cows at the end of the trip wins.
Read a story aloud or talk about picture books--Here are two fun recommended books for young children: My Little Red Fire Truck or Duck! Rabbit!. For older children, you might want to try one of the I Spy series (there are 10 of them). Check out the links and explore them for yourselves.
Twenty questions--animal, vegetable, or mineral? ...person, place, or thing? One person thinks of an animal, vegetable, or mineral and the others asks questions that can only be answered with yes or no. First one to guess correctly within 20 questions wins. If no one does, the person who thought up the animal, vegetable, or mineral wins!
Treasure Hunt--prepare a list of things for kids to look for along the trip, such as a dog, cat, hawk, front-end loader, bulldozer, dump truck, school bus, firehouse, fire truck, police car, playground, etc.
Alphabet Game--find the alphabet, in order, by spotting the letters on license plates or billboards.
Animal Game--points are accumulated for spotting various animals (cows, horses, dogs, etc.). The harder the animal might be to find (an emu ?), the more points scored. The game is over when an agreed upon number of points is reached (10 or 15 for example). Obviously, this takes a little preparation to assign point values in advance. Wild animals make the game more challenging, so using farm or household animals would be best.
I can tell you from experience that children grow up too fast. Let's recapture some of the time we needlessly lose and cherish the opportunities provided by time together in the car.
What car games do you remember playing? Leave a comment if you have some suggestions. How much time did you spend talking with your children today?
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Archived Comments
Audria — Oct 16, 2010
A smile crept across my face as I read the post entitled, “Talking with Your Children…”. The smile was triggered by fond memories of driving in the car with my parents and younger sister. Growing up in California, we did A LOT of driving. Driving from Southern CA to Northern CA, from LA to San Diego, from the mountains to the deserts to the oceans and back again. EVERYONE does A LOT of driving in California.
To pass the time, my family played a myriad of games and sang an abundance of songs, albeit out-of-tune songs, that is. We sang in English, French, Hebrew and sometimes, Arabic. We played commonly familiar games like “Name That Tune”, “The Alphabet Game”, and “Beetle” (counting the number of Volkswagen Beetles we saw on the road) to made-up games such as “Calling All Cars” , “Famous People or Famous Places” and “Silly Stories”. “Calling All Cars” consisted of us portraying highway patrol officers in pursuit of criminals on the road. We would create unusual criminal scenarios based upon what we saw happening around us as we drove. Yes, the game required quite a bit of imagination, but we made it work, somehow. To play “Famous People or Famous Places” players select either famous people or famous places as the focus for the game. In round-robin fashion, one player identifies a famous person. The next player uses the last letter of the last name to identify the next famous person. Names and places can only be used once. The players unable to identify a famous person or a place drop out of the game until one player remains. To be honest, I don’t think anyone ever really lost this game. In fact, we were ALL winners! Yay!! We simply played until we grew tired of it. Finally, “Silly Stories” was a game my sister and I would play together. Brenda and I would take turns sharing one sentence at a time to concoct a silly story that would have us giggling endlessly as we drove.
My father had his preferences for passing the time while driving. My mother, sister, and I would take turns acting as the trip navigator. It was the navigator’s job to review the map the night before our journey, write down the most direct route and one alternate route to our final destination. Then, throughout our travels, the navigator was responsible for ensuring that our family reached the final destination as previously planned. Also, as we drove, my father would ask my sister and me to locate specific freeways, cities or places on the maps and describe how to arrive there from where we currently were. Obviously, this was long before the days of Global Positioning Systems. In fact, I truly believe that my navigation and spatial skills as a sixth grader were far better than they are now, as a thirty-something mom dependent upon my nav system. My parents also encouraged us to play mental math games and spelling games while driving. Surprisingly, these games were fun when the entire family played together.
Now, as a mother of a 14-month-old little boy, I find myself singing in the car to my little one on a daily basis. In fact, ever since Ethan was young, he DETESTED riding in the car. The first five months of his life were replete with tortuous cries from our little guy every time we drove in any vehicle. My efforts to allay his discomfort would often result in my singing songs until he fell fast asleep exhausted from the stress riding in a car would cause him. I am happy to report that those days of incessant crying are over, but the songs are not. Now, car rides consist of his “oh so adorable” babbling peppered with the 20 or so real English words in little Ethan’s expressive vocabulary - "car", "truck", "tree", etc.... I have noticed, however, that sometimes when the singing stops, I hear the soft, sweet voice of my son requesting “more”. Of course, I wholeheartedly oblige. After all, WE are what our children want the most – our time, our attention, our love, and just maybe ... our songs.
P.S. - Check out this website for games to play in the car: www.momsminivan.com
Steven Melnick — Oct 16, 2010
Audria: You exemplify the point I was trying to make in the post. Particularly, "WE are what our children want the most--our time, our attention, our love, and just maybe...our songs." Ethan is a lucky boy. Thanks for the comment.
Kelly — Oct 17, 2010
LOVE the idea of the "Famous Places/People" game!! I will for sure remeber that next long ride I take. I don't have kids yet but I can't imagine spending every second in the car watching a t.v. Yikes.
The one I remeber playing alot was "DOTS" with a pencil and paper. You plot out a series of dots, say 10 straight across and down all in neat rows. Then you take turns with two people connecting two dots. The point is to make a box and not to give your opponent a chance to make a box. When you have completed one, put your initial inside and the most boxes wins! If you complete a box you get to go again so be careful or you will set off a big chain for your opponent. It takes strategy and can be a lot of fun.
Steven Melnick — Oct 18, 2010
Thanks for the comment, Kelly. I don't recall the dots game, but I'm sure it was lots of fun and you only need a pencil and paper...batteries not included!