TRANSCRIPT:

Are you ready to transform your family? Please join us today for Clear View Retreat’s family radio devotion that we call the ‘Five Minute Family.’ Families need to invest time, thought, and initiative into one another, and we spend five minutes here each week looking at different topics and how a ‘Five Minute Family’ can maximize time throughout their day to live out God’s relating principles.

Thank you for joining us again. We are Jim and Kim Nestle, founders and directors of Clear View Retreat. Please remember that though the suggestions we talk about are five-minute time frames; these are just the starters. We are not striving to check off our five minutes of intentional relating and then drawing back into ourselves. As we intentionally choose nuggets of time scattered throughout the day to invest in one another, we honor our loving and intentional God.

You are absolutely right, Jim. So, Five Minute Family, if you heard us last week, how did you do choosing your five one-minute moments to invest in each other? Have you been intentional to complete those five minutes (and possibly more)?

We would love to hear how your week went, connect with us at: clearviewretreat.org and email us your thoughts and questions. Today, we will be discussing digital connections.

The biggest elephant in any room today is either the smallest computer (our phones) or the largest wall ‘decoration’ (our TVs). Let’s explore how a ‘Five Minute Family’ can traverse this digital age. We parents and spouses cannot simply demonize screens and expect our loved ones to follow suit, especially our children. For example, my fifteen-year-old son has asked me multiple times to play a new video game with him. I keep saying no. One, I am awful at video games, and, two, I really can’t stand them. However, it hit me that he is not asking me to play a game; he is inviting me into his world. If I continue to push him away, I will deal with those consequences for many years to come. At some point, he will believe that I do not value him because I do not value what is important to him. That is NOT the message I want to send. So, I am going to find five minutes (or, more likely, five one-minute segments because I am not sure I can handle the video games for a full five-minute chunk), and I am going to intentionally engage with my son. Hopefully, as I learn more about his world small amounts of time will snowball into more.

You see, we need to choose connection WITHIN our kids’ worlds, including the digital part. We can ask open-ended questions such as ‘how does this game make you feel?’ Cheesy? Maybe, but, still, we need our children (and ourselves) thinking about the impact of the screen time we have. Other questions you can ask include: how does this help you connect to others? how will these skills help you in the future? and what do you think the creators were trying to accomplish with [this] aspect of the game?

Mom, dad? Husband, wife? Do you need to stop vilifying your loved one’s screen time and not wondering about your own (don’t worry, we’ll get into the more in a few weeks)? Is there a minute that you can take to share your digital world with your spouse or your child so that they know that they matter in all areas of your life? Researchers share that this is the only time in history when those who had no digital exposure as children and those who have had digital exposure before birth will live together. Digital is here to stay, so what do we do?

When we enter into our loved one’s digital world, we have more influence and understanding of who they are. As we expose them to other aspects of life, we can hook into what is happening in their digital world because we have had glimpses of it. Make the digital world your ally instead of your enemy, and you will better reach your children’s hearts.

For further reading, we recommend a few good books out there: Every Parent’s Guide to Navigating our Digital World by Kara Powell, The Tech-Wise Family by Andy Crouch, or The Digital Invasion by Drs. Hart and Frejd.

We appreciate your letting us be a part of your morning, and we pray that God will fill you with hope as you see the riches of His greatness and glory. Keep finding those five minutes to pour into your loved ones. It matters because they matter to Him! Please visit us online at clearviewretreat.org for more information.