We should have done this ages ago

A few weeks ago we were in Phoenix tagging along on my husband’s work trip. Some friends were there, too, and at our poolside chats the topic of screens, teens, kids, parents, and boundaries came up again and again.This topic is on the mind of a lot of people right now.

I promise this won’t be the topic every week, but I thought I’d share something we started doing this summer that has already made a big difference. It does have to do with screens, but not in the way that we’ve discussed before.

It’s the other screen

The TV.

In our summertime screen planning meeting, which sounds formal but was really just a discussion on our hike down a mountain, my husband made the radical suggestion that our kids keep the TV off this summer. He said he noticed how the kids used TV shows to solve boredom, but they ended up watching the same stuff again and again. This only left them feeling more frustrated at the boredom of it all. Not only that, because our one TV is near the kitchen, the TV made it impossible to play music, for example, while we prepared our evening meal. He guessed that if we told the kids they couldn’t watch TV shows or movies except as as a whole-family activity they wouldn’t really miss it much.

I didn’t argue because I knew he was right.

We told the kids the plan. They would still get their daily allotment of time on the Nintendo, but filler TV was off for the summer.

I’ve always resisted doing this in the past not because I was worried about how it would affect my kids, but how it would affect me. I knew that if I canned the TV I wouldn’t have a built-in babysitter. I would have to enforce the rule. I would have to say “no” approximately five thousand times per day. I would listen to all the whining.

I was wrong.

Beyond the initial shock there has been little argument from anyone and we have all been happier..

The seven-year-old has stopped repeating sassing sayings she was hearing again and again on the tween’s favorite show. The kids finished six large jigsaw puzzles in two weeks. We’ve visited the library and bookstore weekly. They’ve already finished more books this summer than any summer before. We’ve made homemade play dough for the first time in over a year. The kids have taught the neighbors how to play Monopoly Jr. Kids are baking cookies for an afternoon treat. Kids are willing to help set the table for dinner because they aren’t being pulled away from a show.

It’s been incredibly peaceful and productive.

Having a hard line of “no TV” has made it incredibly easy to uphold the ethos. There is no wiggle room for kids to negotiate. No one has more TV time than another. Everyone has found something better to do with their time. Even better, I no longer have to monitor four kids and the amount of TV that they consume on a daily basis. No one is grouchy about turning off the TV in the middle of a favorite episode.

With no TV, my summer got a whole lot more simplified.

I’m not sure if we will ever go back.

We should have done this ages ago.

Why Young Living?

People often ask me, “Why Young Living?” They wonder why I don’t buy essential oils from Target, TJ Maxx, or a health boutique. They wonder why on earth I would pay more for essential oils when I could get the same thing much cheaper at Costco.

It’s an excellent question. And the answer is this: you can’t get the same thing anywhere else.

I purchase my essential oils from Young Living because I know the quality of what I’m getting when I crack open a new bottle.

Consider Cypress, for example..

Did you know that essential oils rely on chemical properties to deliver their full benefit? If you want Cypress to do the job it’s intended to do, you need all of its chemical constituents in play. But to get all those chemical constituencies, you need an oil that was grown, harvested, and distilled properly, otherwise the oil is just a scent and nothing more.

For example, Cypress oil must be distilled for 24 hours to produce its full range of chemical constituents — 280 properties, to be exact. Distill for only 20 hours and the oil contains only about 20 properties. Most oils on the market are distilled for less than four hours.

This is why I choose Young Living. If I’m going to spend my hard-earned money on essential oils, I want to get a product that actually does what it promises to do. When it comes to essential oils, quality matters more than anything else.

Young Living is the only essential oil company in the world that oversees each step of the growing process. From the soil where their seeds grow to the tests they run on each bottle of oil to ensure all the chemical components are present, Young Living is passionate about the quality of their product. In fact, they invite you to visit their farms so you can see the whole process for yourself. (Here’s a picture of me at their farm in Mona, Utah!)

You can read the specifics on Young Living’s sourcing, testing, global stewardship, and Young Living’s farms, right here.

I choose Young Living because I literally can’t get the same thing anywhere else.

Snippet from my week

We try to spend Fridays at the beach, and this week the weather finally cooperated for a beautiful sunny summer day! As a treat we stopped at In-n-Out for dinner on the way home. While in the drive through line we spotted our friends right behind us! Totally unplanned (and also impressive as it was over five miles from the beach in SoCal traffic). The waving out of car windows to friends was too sweet!

Thanks for reading! Would you ever consider no TV for your kids? Have you already? Do you think I’m crazy for suggesting it!? I would love to hear about it! Just hit reply if you’d like to respond. (When you hit reply, your message goes directly to my email. It’s a private conversation between just us.) I read all your messages and try to respond, but not always in a timely manner. Sorry! And if you enjoyed this email, you’d be doing me a favor by forwarding it to someone else who might like it.