Right now, I’m sitting in our smallest bedroom that we call the “Computer Room”. For a long time, this location has worked well for us. Walking down the hall to the bedrooms, you have to turn left and left again to get to this room and being curled around from the rest of the house keeps THE MESS contained and out of sight. This room is also the dumping ground for wayward piles of papers and books and toys. And clothes. And bath and body stuff someone gifted me that I think I might be allergic to. There’s also a dead printer and a dead fish. Wow, this room is a dump.
While this is a great spot for us to house our garbage, it’s not a great place for our kids to use the computer. If our children want to use the internet, they do so in a room that is tucked away from the rest of the house. Your parental RED ALERT just started whooping, didn’t it? I know, I know. We originally thought we’d be good at walking by and checking on them, but we’re not. And even when we are, they can hear us coming down the hall, nearly eliminating the possibility of the Sneak Attack. Tonight we found our son doodling on a white board that had chat on the same page. OH NO YOU DIDN’T. Which led to a big, ugly discussion about whether or not he was using the chat (HEART ATTACK!) and reminding him that Google searches are NEVER OKAY! NEVER! Do you see me WAGGING MY FINGER IN YOUR FACE? NEVVVVVER OKAY!
I’m not willing to have that conversation over and over again and I’m certainly not going to cure my laziness any time soon. So it’s time to make a decision. Are we going to continue to allow the kids to use the internet? If so, where are we going to put the computer?
What do you do about this at your house? Do your kids use the computer to view the internet? Do you sit with them the entire time? Is your computer in a public living area like the living room or kitchen? Will you buy me a laptop? Do you need a giant and peeling computer desk? Can I interest you in a dead fish?
