Today’s challenge: Recover a whole week’s worth of work in 1 day 🎯
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It’s 1pm and I finally feel well enough to work – yay! Still at home, my dog Tabbie by my side, my sons J and D reading their books, my hubby Alex is not home until very very late tonight, so I have the ideal environment. I’m ready.
Can it be done?

I have seen children play an intense videogame non-stop for 8 to 12 hours, sometimes more. My sons have, when they first got a game. Hours of intense focus and drive. This is no different. I have focus, drive, and I’m definitely interested in the work – I love what I do, so why not?

I will talk some other time about videogames, I am sure as a teacher and founder of an educational program, the last thing anyone wants to hear is that I support videogame playing for 8 to 12 hours, or that I support it at all for that matter.

I won’t go into it right now (I have work to catch up on – haha!) but what I will say is this: It’s always better not to adopt an all-or-nothing attitude about things like videogames. My sons have gone through phases, and that’s normal. Often they don’t play for months and months, and other times, a new game comes out and they want to play all day and all night. I think that’s great for them. They demonstrate perseverance, passion, drive, all good things. Besides, often they invite their friends (at my house we normally have our 2 boys and then all the boys in the neighbourhood, which we love), they are social, they have an amazing time. I find that because we don’t forbid them from doing that when they really want to, they don’t feel the need, the desire, to play like that all the time. I always ensure that my sons are the ones making the decisions for themselves, and you would be surprised, often they are a lot more strict with themselves than you would have been. They have a very pure sense of right and wrong.

Could I be more strict and forbid videogames completely at my house? Definitely, but what I have seen, for the most part, in households that are that strict, is that children hide from their parents, and play anyway, at their friends’ houses. I don’t want a relationship with my children where they lie to me just to do what they want. When that’s the case, you are no longer in the space as the parent where you can coach them. Besides, not all videogames are terrible. What we have tried instead is to discuss with them what playing too much does to their brains (it helps that I do a lot of research on brain development – I have credible evidence), and help them decide for themselves what an acceptable amount of time would be per week. If they want to use all that time in one day, then fine, they just know that they won’t have any time left for the rest of the week. The result?: moderation and self-control.

Anyway, I digress. Classical music is on, a hot cup of coffee my son made me by my side, 137 e-mails and 99 to dos – back to work :)