Raising Children to engage in REAL life

We had some company a while back with some teenagers… which made me thankful for the stage of life I am now in. 😉

After they left I told my husband how sad it is that children, teenagers & even adults don’t know how to interact with REAL people anymore.  I mean they came in looking for a place to plug their phones!  They plopped down on the couches zoned into their electronic contraptions.  Real conversation was foreign to them & what little they did was with a phone in hand with very little eye contact. 

Sad.

But the sad thing is- it was somewhat the same with the adults.  Sports update here.  Text. Facebook notification.  The list goes on.  

This is so sad to me.  I don’t want this for my kids.  

I mean they already ask for games on phones now… at 3,4 & 6!!!  

How do we stop this?  

My husband & I have really been considering this- & how we want our kids to be when they become teenagers.  We don’t want kids who have NO idea how to interact other than texting.  We want them to engage in real life! 

We have recently been weeding out out DVD collection.  We’ve realized that we want to be a learning/reading family & in order to achieve that we must do that.  So slowly I’m ebaying them off- to invest in wholesome BOOKS & such.  

It is so hard in this day & time- I feel like we have to compete with EVERYTHING as parents.  Kids don’t get bored anymore- they are constantly entertained by the world.  I refuse to give in to the world’s distractions.  I will fight to deprive my children of these distractions & teach them to value the importance of their imagination & REAL LIFE. 

I have discovered as well (in the past couple of months) that there is no community if you are not apart of the social media aspect of things.  That’s where everyone interacts now!  How sad that is for so many young mothers.  I’m not downing social media- totally.  I can see where it has it’s good sides.  But when it becomes strictly how people converse… something is wrong.  I have made it my purpose to be intentional with real life relationships.

 It breaks my heart- really it does. 

Do you have any thoughts?  How do you handle things like this with your children?